CHAPTER V.

_THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW MYTHOLOGY._

Battle and bloodshed, pursuit and suppression on the one side, love and union, glowing desire and coy evasion on the other, are the points of view from which the Myth regards the relations of day and night, of the grey morning and the sunrise, of the red sunset and the darkness of night, and their recurring changes. And this point of view is made yet more definite by the mythical idea that when forces are either engaged in mutual conflict, or seeking and pursuing one another in mutual love, as one follows the other, so one must have sprung from the other, as the child from the father or the mother; or else, being conceived as existing side by side in the moment of battle or of heavenly love, must be brothers or sisters, children of the same father or of the same mother, i.e. of the phenomenon that precedes both of them alike—as the bright day precedes the twilight and the night—or must be the parents of the child that follows them.

Therefore, still more definitely, murders of parents or children or brothers, battles between brothers, sexual love and union between children and parents, between brother and sister, form the chief plots of all myths, and by their manifold shades have produced that variety in our race’s earliest observations of nature, which we encounter in the thousand colours of the Myth.

The talented founders of Aryan Comparative Mythology, especially Max Müller in the first rank, have set these themes of the myth on so firm and unquestioned a foundation both in relation to psychology and to philology, and have so completely introduced them to the mind of the educated class, that I may safely omit a new exposition of this axiom of all Mythology. I content myself with pointing once more to what was shown in the preceding chapters, that these fundamental mythical themes are not something specially Aryan, but lie at the bottom of the Myth of all mankind without distinction of race, and consequently must form a starting-point when we are about to investigate Semitic or Hebrew myths.

The task of the following chapter will therefore be to find a place in the category of what is _common_ to the _whole_ of human kind for the myth of the Hebrews; in other words, to prove the existence of the myth-plots on Hebrew ground. As it is not my object to exhaust all the materials, to present a system already perfectly worked out on every side, or to erect a building with all its rooms and stories stuffed full, I shall confine myself to that which, after competent and sober philological criticism, can be acknowledged as certain and indubitable. I hope that other investigators, who will gain from the method pursued here a rich treasury of material, will then follow up these safe results by gleanings of their own.

§ 1. In the designation of the Heaven the Semite starts from the sensuous impression of _height_, and therefore forms the names denoting it from the roots _samâ_ (shama) and _râm_, both of which express the idea of ‘being high.’ To the latter group belongs e.g. the Ethiopic rayam,[244] which denotes _heaven_. Both roots are combined in the Phenician Shâmîn-rûm. One of the most prominent figures of Hebrew mythology belongs to this category: Abh-râm the _High Father_, with his innumerable host of descendants.[245] We have seen above that in his view of nature the nomad begins with the sky at night. The sky by itself is the dark, nightly, or clouded heaven; the sunshine on the sky is an accessory. Hence it comes that in Arabic the word Sky (samâ) is very often used even for ‘Rain;’ and the notions of _rain_ and _sky_ are so closely interwoven that even the traces of rain on the earth are called sky.[246] In the language of the Bongo people there is only one word for sky and rain, hetōrro.[247] On Semitic ground the Assyrian divine name Rammanu or Raman must be mentioned here. If this name has any etymological connexion with the root _râm_ ‘to be high,’ as Hesychius and some modern scholars say, though others derive it from _raʿam_ ‘thunder,’ Raʿamân ‘the Thunderer,’[248] then we find here again the primitive mythological idea that the intrinsically High is the dark stormy sky, or, personified, the God of Storms. So also in the old Hebrew myth the ‘High’ is the nightly or rainy sky. The best known myth that the Hebrews told of their Abh-râm is the story of the intended sacrifice of his only son Yiṣchâḳ, commonly called Isaac. But what is Yiṣchâḳ? Literally translated, the word denotes ‘he laughs,’ or ‘the Laughing.’ In the Semitic languages, especially in proper names and epithets, the use of the aorist[249] (even in the second person, e.g. in the Arabic name Tazîd) is very frequent where we should employ a participle.[250] So here. Now who is the ‘He laughs,’ the ‘Smiling one'? No other but 'He who sits in heaven and laughs’ (Ps. II. 4), whom the mythology of almost all nations and their later poetry too likes to call the Laughing or Smiling one. When, as Plutarch tells in his Life of Lycurgus, that legislator consecrated a statue to Laughter (γέλως) and Laughter enjoyed divine honours at Sparta, we are certainly not to understand it of the laughter that plays round the lips of mortals, but of the celestial smile with which Mythology endows the Sun, as when the Indian singer calls Ushas (the Sun[251]) the _Smiling_ (Rigveda, VI. 64. 10). With regard to the Sun’s laughing in the Aryan mythology, we can refer to the learned work of Angelo de Gubernatis, ‘Zoological Mythology’ (vol. I. i. 1).

But there is a primitive connexion between the ideas ‘to laugh’ and ‘to shine,’ which is not, as might be thought, brought about _figuratively_ by a mere poetical view, but rather, at least on the Semitic field, established at the very beginning of the formation of speech. An extraordinary number of the verbs which describe a loud expression of joyousness (to shout, bellow, laugh &c.), originally denoted to shine, dazzle, be visible, and the like; affording another confirmation of Geiger’s thesis, that language owes its origin more to optic than to acoustic impressions (see _supra_ p. 40). I give a series of linguistic facts as examples to prove this assertion. The Hebrew ṣâhal signifies both ‘to shine bright’ and ‘to cry aloud,’ and its phonetic connexion with ṣâhar, zâhar &c., proves the priority of the optical meaning. Similarly hillêl, which means ‘to cry out, to triumph,’ was originally ‘to be brilliant,’ as is proved by the derivative nouns hilâl (Ar.) ‘new moon’ and hêlêl (Heb.) ‘morning star,’ and the employment of the verb itself in Hebrew. Ṣârach, ṣerach, ṣaraḥa, denotes ‘to cry’ in the chief representatives of Semitism; but the Arabic has also preserved the original sense ‘clarus, manifestus fuit,’ which appears in the Hebrew noun ṣerîach ‘a conspicuous eminence,’ or ‘a high tower.’[252] The roots yâphaʿ (in Hiphʿîl) ‘to be bright’ and pâʿâ ‘to cry,’ are through their etymological connexion brought into this group. The root of the Hebrew hêdâd ‘cry of joy’ is the same from which Hadad, the name of the Syrian god of the shining sun, can be etymologically derived. This root undoubtedly represents a reduplicated form of the radical of the solar name Yehûdâ ‘Judah’ (see § 14 of this chapter). The verbal root from which nahâr (Ar.) nehârâ (Heb.) ‘daylight,’ is derived has in one Arabic derivative form the meaning ‘to cry.’ So also ṣâchaḳ ‘to laugh aloud’ (compare ṣâʿaḳ ‘to cry’) must have originally expressed the idea of ‘being bright, clear,’ which is proper to the primitive Semitic root ṣaḥ, ṣach. If this be admitted, it follows that the name Yiṣchaḳ as a solar epithet was not formed by mere figurative or poetical metaphor, but is based on the original signification of the group of roots to which it belongs. Poetical phraseology then brought into general use what was based on etymology.

There is nothing more universal and more generally pervading all nature-poetry than the idea ‘Like one _laughing gaily_ the world shone,’ as the Tatar poet says of the sunrise;[253] and in Arabic poetry, which has to be especially considered on these subjects, it is met with at every step. In the charming Romance of ʿAntar, the cessation of night and the break of day is dozens of times expressed by the words ‘until the black night went off and the _laughing morning_ (al-ṣabâḥ al-ḍaḥik) arose;’ or ‘the morning arose and smiled (ibtasama) out of dazzling teeth.’[254] The old poet al-Aʿsha says of a blooming meadow that it rivals the sun in laughter (yuḍâḥik al-shams);[255] and in the last maḳâmâ of Ḥarîrî (de Sacy, 2nd ed. p. 673. 2,) it is even said that ‘the tooth of the daybreak laughs’ (ibtasama thaġr al-fajr), i.e. becomes visible, as the teeth of a person laughing become visible. This mythic view has become so incorporated in the Arabic language that the word _bazaġa_, denoting that the teeth are prominent, is also used of the rising of the sun. In a small Arabic tract[256] by the Sheikh ʿUlwân b. ʿAṭîyyâ of Ḥamâ, which brings forward the contest between Day and Night, a subject not infrequent[257] in Oriental literature, in which the two champions engage in a battle of respective excellence in prose and poetry, there also occurs a passage suitable for quotation here. The Night says in the course of her dispute: ‘To the string of these thy blameworthy qualities this must yet be added—that thou art changeable and many-coloured in thy various conditions, and not stedfast; thy beginning contradicts thy end, and thy interior is different from thy exterior. O what an utterly culpable quality is this, which scratches out the face of every merit! _Thou laughest at thy rising_, when thou rememberest weeping and mourning; and at thy extinction thou clothest thyself in thy most gorgeous of raiments, instead of putting on mourning garments.’ And the Day replies, in his own defence to his black antagonist: ‘What rank takest thou in comparison with me? What is thy gloominess and thy sombre seriousness in comparison with my _gay smiles_ (ḍaḥikî wabtisâmî)?’[258]

It is not only the clear shining sunny sky that is called by the Arab poet ‘the Smiling;’ this attribute is applied also to other luminous things, e.g. to the glittering _Stars_ (not to the night-sky itself),[259] and to the Lightning, which is even called al-ḍâḥik, ‘the Laughing.’ In the Romance of ʿAntar there frequently occurs the expression ‘the Lightning laughed’ (al-barḳ yaḍḥak, e.g. XXIV. 65. 6).[260] Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, an excellent Arabic poet, says in an elegy on the death of his father:

I disapprove of merriment even in the _laughing_ (_i.e._ lightning) cloud, And let no cloud bring me rain, except a gloomy, dark one.[261]

We have in passing treated the words ‘He who sits in heaven laughs’ in the second Psalm as a mythical reminiscence, which originally referred to the Sun, but then, like similar instances which we shall see, was employed by the poet in another sense. But there is nothing to exclude the possibility that the Laughter of him who sits in heaven may refer in this passage not to the sweet smile of the bright sunny sky, but to the wild raging of the Thunderer, pictured in the myths as scornful laughter, as F.L.W. Schwartz[262] shows by many examples from classical antiquity. This conception would also be more suitable to the context of the passage in question in the second Psalm, where mention is made of derisive laughter. However this be, the ‘Smiling one’ whom the ‘High Father’ intends to slay, is the smiling day, or more closely defined the smiling sunset, which gets the worst of the contest with the night-sky and disappears.

§ 2. The same myth is also given as follows: ‘_Jephthah sacrifices or kills his daughter_.’ In its later ethical or religious transformation given in Judges XI. 29–40, it is known to everyone. This story is especially worthy of consideration in connexion with the science of Mythology, because a Hebrew custom similar to the mourning for Osiris or Adonis and Tammûz was fastened on to it, as appears in v. 40; and it is well known that these latter rites stand in a very close connexion with physical phenomena, and with the myth which speaks of these phenomena.

What means Jephthah (Yiphtâch)? We have again an aorist form[263] exactly similar to Yiṣchâḳ; it denotes literally ‘he opens, he begins,’ thence ‘the opener or beginner.’ For the understanding of this mythical person we must note by anticipation that this Opener has a correlative in the After-follower Jacob (Yaʿaḳôbh), ‘he follows his heels.’[264] Both these expressions belong to one group of mythic conceptions; and it is remarkable that in these designations we find mythology already advanced to the stage which we characterised in the previous chapter as belonging to the ideas of the Agriculturist. For these two names and the cycle of myths coupled with them presuppose the view that in the order of time the Day is the earlier and is followed by the Night; and the very circumstance that the idea of time is impressed on these myths with something of precision (see above, p. 44), also indicates a relatively late formation of these designations and of the views that led to them. The Opener is the Sun, which first opens the womb (see Gen. XXX. 22; EX. XIII. 2, 12), while the Night is called the After-follower; just as in the Rigveda (II. 38. 6) the Night follows on the heel of Sâvitri. To establish more certainly the meaning of the name Yaʿaḳôbh it may also be mentioned that in Arabic the participial form of the same verb, ‘ʿÂḳib,’ is exceedingly frequent in the same signification. According to Mohammedan tradition one of the many names of the Arabian Prophet is Al-ʿâḳib, with the sense that Moḥammed, the last of the prophets, followed after and concluded their line.[265] We will now first return to Jephthah, the _Opening Sun_. This conception of the Sun as Opener receives a remarkable illustration in a passage of the Persian national epic by Firdûsî, in which occurs an expressive echo of this mythical view. The sun is there actually a _golden key_, which is lost during the night.[266] As the lighting up of the sun is conceived as an _unlocking_, so the darkness is a _locking up_. ‘Who commandeth the sun and it riseth not, and who locketh up the stars,’ is said in Job IX. 7, of the God who brings on darkness. The solar character of Jephthah receives confirmation from another side, but likewise on Semitic ground. In the version of the Phenician Cosmogony furnished by Damascius[267] it is related, on the authority of Mochus, that the spiritual God Ulômos begot Chrysoros τὸν ἀνοιγέα, ‘the Opener.’ The Sanchuniathon of Philo Herennius identifies this Opener with Hephaestus, who was the first inventor of iron implements (Tûbhal-Ḳayin of the Hebrews). Now, although in its latest development this cosmogony does not pretend to mean anything else than the opening of the Egg of the world,[268] there can be no doubt that this version belongs to a very late, perhaps the last phase of development of the myth which lies hidden in the background—a stage at which all that makes the myth a myth is quite washed out and changed by the prevalence of theological ideas into an artfully systematised cosmogony. But originally nothing else can have been understood by the Opener than the firstborn brother of the pair, Sun and Night. Another mythic trait which we know of this Opener testifies to his solar signification in the myths on which the Phenician cosmogony was based. Philo Herennius’ authority, who calls the opener _Chrysôr_, says of him: ‘He was the first man who fared in ships.’ This trait, which is far from fitting into the frame of the portrait of Hephaestus presents a very attractive and simple conception held by the men of the myth-forming age. We generally find in myths of the rising and setting of the sun, that the view which lives longest and conforms most naturally to the nature of the phenomenon is that the rising sun ascends out of the river or the sea, and that the setting sun sinks into the water.

The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day _Is crept into the bosom of the sea_,

as Shakespeare says,[269] or as a German poet, feeling an echo of the meaning of the old myth, speaks still more expressively:

‘—that the sun was only A lovely woman, who the old sea-god Out of convenience married; All the day long she joyously wander’d In the high heavens, deck’d out with purple And glitt’ring diamonds, And all-beloved and all-admired By every mortal creature, And every mortal creature rejoicing With her sweet glance’s light and warmth; But in the evening, impell’d, all-disconsolate, Once more returneth she home To the moist house and desert arms Of her grey-headed spouse.’[270]

In a Swedish popular song, a King of England has two daughters, the elder _black as night_ (Night itself); the other, younger, _beautiful and brilliant like the day_ (Day itself). The latter goes forward followed by the other, who comes and throws her into the sea.[271] In this popular story, also, the sunset is viewed as a fall into the sea; but one new feature is here added, viz., that the two sisters fight, and the black one, the dark Night, throws the brilliant Sun into the sea. In the morning the Sun that had fallen into the sea rises up again out of her night’s quarters. The Roman poet expresses the idea ‘Never did a fairer lady see _the sun arise_,’ by the words:

Ne qua femina pulchrior Clarum _ab Oceano diem_ Viderit _venientem_;[272]

and because the sun rises out of the water, a Persian poet[273] calls water in general ‘the Source of Light (tsheshmei nûr).’ Connected with these ideas is that of the so-called _Pools of the Sun_,[274] which are assigned to the rising and setting sun alike.[275] But the morning sun is also made to come forth out of _mud_ and _morass_ (as in Homer from the λίμνη), as is described amongst others in the Arabic tradition.[276] It is obvious that this conception must have first arisen in countries whose horizon was not bounded by the sea. The same assumption must be made with regard to another conception also, found in the African nation of the Yorubas. These regard the town Ife as a sort of abode of gods, _where the Sun and Moon always issue forth again from the earth in which they were buried_.[277] No doubt this notion was formed among the portion of the nation that lived at a distance from the sea. A considerable part of the elements of the animal-worship which refers to water animals may be traced back to mythological conceptions which we have exhibited above.[278]

When in ancient times men dwelling by the sea-shore saw the heavenly fire-ball in the evening dip into the sea, and the next morning issue shining at the opposite point of the sea-line, what other idea could he conceive of this but that down in the sea the sun was swallowed by a monster which spat out its prey again on the shore (see p. 28)?—or else that the sun undertook a voyage, starting over night?—or, as is so beautifully expressed in the Hellenic myth, that he took a bath, so as to shine on the sea-shore in the morning with new brightness and purified from all dinginess?

_Navigation_ is the explanation of this daily phenomenon which prevails in the myth. It became so general that later among the Egyptians it was divested of its original associations and brought into connexion with the sun of day. In the Egyptian view the Sun’s bark sails over the ocean of heaven:[279] Ἥλιον δὲ καὶ σελήνεν οὐχ ἅρμασιν ἁλλὰ πλοίοις ὀχήμασι χρωμένους περιπλεῖν ἀεί, says Plutarch of the Egyptian view,[280] and adduces Homeric parallels.[281] The Jewish Midrâsh compares the course of the sun to that of a ship—and curiously enough to a ship coming from Britain,[282] which has 365 ropes (the number of the days of the solar year), and to a ship coming from Alexandria, which has 354 ropes (the number of the days of the lunar year).[283] The solar figures, then, are everywhere brought into connexion with the invention and employment of navigation. The sinking Apollo is with the Greeks the founder of navigation. Herakles receives from Helios the present of a golden bowl, which he used to employ as a bark when he sailed across the Okeanos. The voyage of the shining (φαί-νω) Phaeacians and Argonauts originally signified only the same sea-passage, which the sun makes every evening. Of Charon himself, the subterranean ferryman (whose name, Schwartz thinks, indicates his solar significance, χαραπός) it has also been proved that his subterranean navigation is only an eschatological development of the solar myth.[284] Indeed, eschatology and conceptions of the things after death and resurrection have their essential origin in the Sun’s voyage under the sea and reappearance on the other side.[285] The Roman Sun-god Janus is also brought into connexion with navigation; this idea is unmistakably expressed on coins which bear the image of the two-headed god,[286] and is especially important here because Janus himself, as the etymology of his name declares, likewise belongs to the series of ‘Openers.’ ‘This name was given him,’ says Hartung, ‘because the door represents in space exactly what formed the basis of his essence with regard to the relations of time and force. For every beginning resembles an entrance.’[287] The most prominent figure of the lately discovered Babylonian epos, Izdubar, and Ûr-Bêl (the Light of Bêl, _i.e._ the Sun), both of them purely solar figures, are provided with ships.[288] We cannot justly doubt, it is true, the historical character of the Biblical prophet Jonah. But, from what was discussed in the Second Chapter, this does not exclude the possibility that various mythical features may have been fastened on this undoubtedly historical personage, as is the case with many other persons of Hebrew history, for example, most strikingly with David. The most prominent mythical characteristic of the story of Jonah is his celebrated abode in the sea in the belly of the whale. This trait is eminently solar and belongs to the group on which we are now engaged. As on occasion of the storm the storm-dragon or the storm-serpent swallows the sun, so when he sets he is swallowed by a mighty fish, waiting for him at the bottom of the sea. Then when he appears again on the horizon, he is _spit out on the shore_ by the sea-monster.[289]

Accordingly, when Chrysôr is said to have been the _first navigator_, this must have the same meaning that it has when applied to Apollo, viz. that the Sun, sinking and going down into the ocean, is taking a journey by sea; or when applied to the Tyrian Herakles, the builder of the city (building of cities we shall see to be a specially solar characteristic), called the _inventor of navigation_;[290] or when used of Prometheus, recounting before the descendants of Okeanos his benefits conferred on mankind, and saying:—

βραχεῖ δὲ μύθω πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε, πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.

Learn, in a word, the sense of all I mean: Prometheus gave all arts to mortal men;—

without forgetting to allude to the ships:—

θαλασσόπλαγκτα δ’ οὔτις ἄλλος ἀντ’ ἐμοῦ λινόπτερ’ εὗρε ναυτίλων ὀχήματα.

The seaman’s chariot roaming o'er the sea With flaxen wings none other found—’twas I.[291]

Now if this trait raises the solar character of Chrysôr to a certainty, then it cannot be doubted that his epithet the ‘Opener,’ which is identical with the Hebrew name Yiphtâch (Jephthah) is an appellation of the Sun—the First-born. The Sun sacrifices his own daughter. In the evening the sunset sky is born from the lap of the sun, and in the morning, when in place of the red sunrise (which the myth does not distinguish from the red sunset) the hot midday sun comes forth, Jephthah has killed his own daughter, and she is gone.

Thus we see in the myths of Abram and of Jephthah the two sides of the same idea, each having its peculiar form and frame: the former tells of the victory of the Night, the dark sky of night over the Sun, the latter of that of the Dawn over the shades of Night. In Hebrew mythology the name Enoch (Chanôkh) belongs to this series. It was very happily explained by Ewald[292] as denoting the Beginner, _inceptor_, and is therefore a strict synonym of Jephthah.

We meet with one other ‘Opener’ on Semitic ground, the Libyan and especially Cyrenaic god of agriculture, whose name is preserved in the Grecized form Aptûchos (Ἀπτοῦχος). Blau[293] has already connected the name with the verb pâthach ‘to open,’ as opener of the ground by the plough. We must here refer in anticipation to the following chapter, which will elucidate the connexion in which the ancient religions put the rise of agriculture with the personages of mythology; and such a personage this Libyan ‘Opener’ undoubtedly is. Anyhow, we must hold fast to the identity of Aptûchos (Ἀπτοῦχος) and Jephthah.

§ 3. The myth of the death of Isaac, and that of his later life, which of course presupposes that he continued to live, are not contradictory to the mythical mind. At a more advanced stage of intellectual life, which had lost all share in and understanding of the nature-myth, and the mythical figures became _epic persons_, this contradiction necessitated an arrangement or harmonising process; and in this lies the reason for the origin of the turn which occurred in the historical form of the legend of Isaac, substituting for the accomplished homicide an _intended_ homicide; which latter, when religious feeling began to rule over the still existing mythic materials, became later simply an act of pious willingness to perform a sacrifice. Such contradictions do not present themselves distinctly to the mind of men at the stage of the actual formation of myths. The slain Isaac appears again on the arena a few hours after he was killed; he shews himself afresh. Some fifteen years ago when a Christian mission penetrated to the Central-African tribe of the Liryas, a great crowd collected round a priest, who began to expound to them the main principles of his religion. ‘But when he came to the attributes of God, they absolutely refused to allow that he is very good. On the contrary, they said, he is very angry, and even bad, for he sends death; he is the cause of dying, and sends the sun, which always burns up our crops. _Scarcely is one sun dead in the west in the evening, than there grows up out of the earth in the east next morning another which is no better._’[294] In this story we see the beginning of the transition from the formation of myths to religious reflexion: the sun that appears in the morning in the east is a different one from that which fell dead to the earth in the evening in the west. Yet, though substantially it is a different one and not identical with that of the previous day, it is still perfectly like it, and qualitatively not distinct from it. At the mythical stage, when it was still productive, Isaac reappearing is the same as Isaac already killed. He appears again several times; he marries Ribhḳâ (Rebekah); and again we meet him old and blind ‘with weakened eyes,’ sending his son Yaʿaḳôbh (Jacob) into a foreign land, to return only after the death of the old blind ‘Smiling’ one, with a large family, and prepared to take up again his old quarrel with his hairy brother Esau, the hunter. The living myth does not treat these events as following one after the other. To work up together the various members of the group of myths which assemble round a common centre or a common name, is not the business of the myth proper. The _epic_ impulse first begins to act in this direction, and gives the first incitement to the harmonising of myths.

We will linger a few minutes longer with Isaac.

He loves and marries Rebekah, or as she is called in the Hebrew text, Ribhḳâ. The Dutch historian of religions C.P. Tiele sees in this name an appellation of the fruitful, rich _earth_,[295] a view which is partially supported by the etymology of the word. ‘The laughing sky of day or the Sun-god (surely originally only the Sun?) is united in marriage with the fatness and fruitfulness of the earth.’ This conception of the myth, notwithstanding its etymological correctness, has little to recommend it to my feeling, but I cannot propose any better in its stead. I only add, that if Tiele’s conception is correct, we shall certainly understand better the feature of the myth which makes ‘the Laughing one’ (Isaac) of his two sons prefer Esau (who will be proved to be a solar character), while the mother’s love attached itself more to Jacob. Esau is a mythical figure homogeneous with Isaac; but the fruitful earth is more closely connected with the dark rainy sky, as a kindred and homogeneous phenomenon.

Another notable point in the myth of Isaac is blindness. ‘And when Isaac was old, his eyes became too dim to see’ (Gen. XXVII. 1). It is an idea peculiarly mythical (which found an echo in poetry), to regard the Sun as an Eye, which looks down with its sharp sight upon the earth. In the Egyptian monuments and in the Book of the Dead the Sun is often represented as an eye, provided with wings and feet. To the same conception are also due the so-called mystic eye which is often met with on Etruscan vessels of clay, and the part played by the eye in the representation of Osiris.[296] The sun is called in the Malacassa language _masovanru_, and in Dayak _matasu_, both of which expressions denote _oculus diei_.[297] In the Polynesian mythology the sun is the left eye of Tangaloa, the highest god of heaven, hence the Eye of Heaven.[298] The sun accordingly possesses also the attributes of the eye. Thus in the Hebrew poetry we meet with the _Eyelashes_[299] (i.e. rays) of the Dawn, ʿaphʿappê shachar (Job III. 9, XLI. 10), as in the Greek with ἁμέρας βλέφαρον (Soph. _Ant._ 104),[300] and in the Arabic with ḥawâjib al-shams. This notion has so completely become an idiom of the Arabic language, where the mythical force of the ‘sun’s eyelashes’ has retired into the background, that we even find the singular: ‘the sun’s eyelash is risen,’ (ṭalaʿa ḥâjib al-shams) or ‘set’ (ġâba ḥâjib al-shams).[301]

Among more recent poets Shakespeare is most familiar with the expression _eye, eye of heaven_, as descriptive of the sun:

Though thy speech doth fail, One eye thou hast to look to heaven for grace; The sun _with one eye_ vieweth all the world. _King Henry VI._ Pt. I. I. 4.

Or with taper light To seek the beauteous _eye of heaven_ to garnish. _King John_, IV. 2.

All places that the _eye of heaven_ visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens. _King Richard II._ I. 3.

When the _searching eye of heaven_ is hid Behind the globe and lights the lower world, Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen. _King Richard II._ III. 2.

Hence also the Dawn is spoken of as _looking about_:—

Who is this that looketh forth as the morning? _Song of Songs_, VI. 10.

At the theological stage the mythical view was subjected to several alterations. The holy book of the Parsees[302] calls the sun the _Eye of Ahuramazda_. Many regard the name ʿAnamelekh, who from 2 Kings XVII. 3 was a deity of the inhabitants of Sepharvaim (the Babylonian Sipar of the cuneiform Inscriptions), expressly designated in the national documents a solar town,[303] as contracted for ʿÊn ham-melekh, i.e. _Eye of the Sun-god Melelkh_, and so probably the sun itself.[304] Even in the speech of a late Hebrew prophet (Zech. IV. 10) we find the same view, somewhat modified: ‘_These seven are the eyes of Jahveh_, that run over the whole earth.’ Here Jahveh’s eyes are undoubtedly to be referred to the sun, and the number seven allows us to think of the seven days of the week.[305] Similarly, it is said in the Atharvaveda IV. 16. 4 of the messengers of Varuṇa; ‘descending from heaven they traverse the whole world, and _inspect the whole earth with a thousand eyes_.’[306] To the same tendency we must attribute names of places such as _ʿÊn Shemesh_, ‘Sun’s Eye,’ (e.g. Josh. XV. 7), and the Egyptian Heliopolis, Arabic ʿayn shams;[307] which suggests the obvious conjecture that the Hebrew ʿIr ha-cheres ‘city of the sun’ was originally and more correctly ʿÊn ha-cheres. The emendation affects only the final consonant ר.[308]

The Indian singer (Rigveda I. 164. 14), says that the sun has a sharp sight, and the same idea is preserved in a relic of Hebrew mythology, which has attached itself to an historical person. Of King David, an historical hero, it is written among other features borrowed from the myth of the Solar hero (to which also must belong the idea that he takes the life of his _giant_ adversary by _hurling stones_), that 'he was ruddy, with beautiful eyes, and a good sight, admônî ʿim yephê ʿênayim we-ṭôbh rôʾî' (1 Sam. XVI. 12). The red colour itself which is praised, since the narrator evidently wishes to characterise David’s handsomeness, shows us that these traits cannot have been invented directly for the hero of this story; for it can scarcely be proved that the Hebrews in ancient times considered reddishness an element of beauty. But the red colour is admirably fitted to figures of the solar myth, as we shall have further occasion to observe in the course of this chapter. With this are connected the beautiful eyes and the good sight, which are certainly taken from the mythical description of the blazing midday sun. They are the relics of a mythic cycle only preserved in fragments, and have been tacked on to the portraiture of an historical hero, who had, like the Solar hero, to fight with a hostile giant. When the sun appeared at noon with a red glow at its highest point in the heaven, the men of old said ‘The Red one is looking down on the earth with his perfect eyes and sharp sight.’ And he viewed the diminution of the solar rays and heat as a weakening of his sight, which ended at sunset with total blindness. Samson (Shimshôn), the hero whose solar character Steinthal has raised above all doubt, ends his heroic career by being made blind. In the Greek mythology the significance of one-eyed and blinded persons is exhibited with equal clearness.[309] This mythical idea is very clearly reflected in language. In Arabic, for example, iṭlachamma or iṭrachamma signifies both _oculos hebetiores habuit_ and _obscura fuit_ [nox]. The verb aġdana, from which aġdan is derived, which is used of suffering from certain eye-diseases, expresses the idea of darkness, and the word inchasafa unites the two meanings _to be eclipsed_ (of the moon) and _to lose one’s sight_. Hence the expression, al-leyl aʿwar, ‘the night is one-eyed.’[310] It becomes clear from all this what is the meaning of the mythical words, ‘And when Isaac was old, his eyes became too dim to see.’ It may also be mentioned here that Shakespeare calls night the _eyeless_:—

Thou and eyeless night Have done me shame. _King John_ V. 6.

§ 4. The battle of the Day with the Night is still more frequently represented as a _quarrel between brothers_. At the very threshold of the earliest Biblical history we meet a brothers’ quarrel of this kind, the source of which is the nature-myth, spread out among all nations of the world without exception. It is not difficult to prove that Cain (Ḳayin) is a solar figure, and that Abel (Hebhel) is connected with the sky dark with night or clouds. Here, as everywhere, investigation must of course be guided by the nature of the personages in question, by the matter of the story, and by the appellative signification of the names. Cain is an agriculturist, Abel a shepherd. We have demonstrated in the preceding chapter that agriculture always has a solar character, whereas the shepherd’s life is connected with the phenomena of the cloudy or nightly sky. Shepherds in mythology are figures belonging to the dark or overclouded sky; whereas huntsmen and agriculturists are solar heroes. The heaven at night is a great tent or a group of tents, with a great piece of pasture close by, where the herds (the clouds) are driven to feed. In German, to be sure, the expression _Himmelszelt_ (heaven’s tent) is also used of the heaven by day, but this is a generalisation of the original limitation to the nocturnal and cloudy sky. This limitation is still acknowledged in the Hungarian language, where _sátoros éj_ is said, ‘the tented (provided with many tents) night;’ e.g. by Vörösmarty at the commencement of the second canto of his national epic ‘Zalán Futása’ (the Flight of Zalán). And in Arabic, ‘Night spread out its tent, and there arose thick darkness,’ is quite a familiar expression.[311]

The shepherd Abel (Hebhel) is accordingly a figure of the dark sky. This is proved also by the signification of the name. For it denotes neither _childlessness_, as some try to explain it by the help of Arabic, and on the supposition that the first parents anticipated their son’s future fate on giving his name, nor simply _son_, being explained from the Assyrian. The Hebrew language itself is adequate to establish the proper signification. The word denotes in Hebrew a ‘breath of wind;’[312] and the wind stands in connexion with the dark sky. Another modification of the same appellation is known to Hebrew mythology. As in other classes of language _h_ and _y_ may interchange dialectically, so here beside Hebhel (Abel) we have Yâbhâl (Jabal). This latter appellation is etymologically either identical with the former, or if not, at least its mythological identity can scarcely be questioned. Yâbhâl (from whence comes mabbûl, ‘body of water,’ hence of the Deluge) signifies Rain (like Indra). Rain and Wind are both attributes of the dark sky and the night-sky. In Arabic the verb ġasaḳa denotes both the darkness of the sky, and the rain, and (what exactly suits the mythical circle of ideas) the flowing of milk from the udder. The rain is to the men of the myth-creating age a milking of the cloud-cows, which the shepherd leads out to pasture by night on the heavenly meadows. The verb aġḍana, of which Freytag, following al-Jauharî, gives only the meaning _perpetuo pluit coelum_, is known to the classical lexicographer of Arabic synonyms also in the sense _it is dark night_. Similarly, aġḍafa denotes both _obscura, atra fuit nox_ and _ad pluviam effundendam paratum et dispositum fuit coelum_. In poetry also rain is often attached to night: an old poet quoted by Ibn al-Sîkkît says,[313] ‘A dark night, during which a drenching rain pours down upon the streets.’[314]

The identity of Abel and Jabal appears conspicuously in another circumstance. Abel is introduced as a Herdsman. In the system of the harmonising genealogy of Genesis, in which Jabal appears some generations later, he is described as the ‘_Father of those that dwell in tents and with cattle_’ (Gen. IV. 2, 20). Both features or rather this identical feature told of both these Patriarchs, have a foundation and are equally true. But in the method of the critical school of Biblical exegesis these two accounts involve a contradiction which it is attempted to solve, either by the usual supposition of different narrators, or by minutely pressing the literal meaning of words and setting up delicate distinctions. The acute Knobel, for instance, pretends to know that 'Even Abel had kept cattle, but only small cattle, and these only in his own district; Jabal invented the moving about with cattle from one district to another.[315] It concerns us not to know how far Jabal extended the area of his pasture, and within what narrow limits Abel confined his: our assumption of the mythological identity of the two designations solves the inconsistency without any resort to minute distinctions.

Equally clear is also the Solar character of the name Cain (Ḳayin). This word, which, with other synonymous names of trades, occurs several times on the so-called Nabatean Sinaitic inscriptions,[316] signifies _Smith_,[317] maker of agricultural implements, and has preserved this meaning in the Arabic ḳayn[318] and the Aramaic ḳinâyâ, whilst in the later Hebrew it was lost altogether, being probably suppressed through the Biblical attempt to derive the proper name Cain etymologically from ḳânâ ‘to gain.’ In Hebrew therefore it appears only as the name of the first fratricide and of his duplicate Tubal-cain (Tûbhal-ḳayin), the brother of Jabal, who is called the founder of the smith’s trade (Gen. IV. 22), and stands to Cain in very much the same relation as Jabal does to Abel.

Cain is accordingly the same mythological figure as Hephaestus and Vulcan with the Greeks and Romans. But there are some other points which determine his Solar character. First, there is the characteristic that after the murder of his brother he built the first city, and called it Enoch (Chanôkh, Gen. IV. 17). We have seen above, and I shall show still more clearly in the treatment of the Myth of Civilisation, that in the myths of all peoples the Solar heroes are regarded as the founders of city-life, and that a fratricide often precedes the building of the city. The agricultural stage, which is connected with the Solar worship, overcomes the stage of nomadic life, which holds to the dark sky of night or clouds; and, after conquering the herdsmen, the surviving agriculturists build the first city. It will not surprise us if the solution of the question raised by F. Lenormant, ‘pour en suivre toutes les formes depuis Cain bâtissant le première ville Hanoch après avoir assassiné Abel, jusqu'à Romulus fondant Rome dans le sang de son frère Remus,’[319] proves the consistency and universality of the ideas of mankind at the mythic stage in reference to this point. Whether the connexion of the zodiacal figure of the Twins with this feature of the myth is so close as this acute French scholar imagines, is an independent question. The account of Cain as the first builder of a city is accordingly a testimony to his Solar character. But far more important testimony is afforded by the characteristic feature in the story of Cain, that after the commission of the crime that fratricide, laden with the curse of Jahveh, has to be ‘a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth’ (Gen. IV. 11). We will pause a little at this mythic feature, and passing beyond Cain, consider it in connexion with a larger group of myths which exhibit the same.[320]

§ 5. The word which preeminently denotes the Sun in the Semitic languages, and which, when the abundant synonyms produced by mythology to designate the Sun had vanished, drove all other names of the Sun into the background, viz. the Hebrew shemesh and the corresponding words in the cognate languages, has been proved to descend from the etymological basis of the idea of rapid motion, or busy running about. This original sense gives the point of connexion with the Aramaic terms shammêsh ‘to serve’ and shûmshemânâ ‘an ant.’[321] The same function which language exhibits in the most prominent name of the Sun is also repeatedly shown in mythology.

The myth views the Sun from the point of view of his rapid course, hastening and continuous motion, or steady march forwards.

Like a bridegroom coming out of the bridal chamber, Who exults like a hero to _run a course_. Ps. XIX. 6 [5].

Hence fiery, rapid horses are attributed to the Sun both in the classical mythology and in Indian and Persian,[322] and no less so in the Hebrew. The latter may be inferred from the fact that in the Hebrew worship in Canaan there were horses dedicated to the Sun. King Josiah, the zealot for Jahveh, was the first to abolish this worship (2 Kings XXIII. 11). And Heinrich Heine gives the jesting couplet:—

Phoebus lashed his steeds of fire In the Sun’s own cab with ire.[323]

To the same mythical conception must be referred the _Wings_ assigned to the Sun or the Dawn, which are mentioned very frequently in the classical mythology.[324] Just as the Egyptians and the Assyrians[325] in their monuments express this aspect of the sun by the picture of a winged solar disc, so the Hebrews, although they did not give expression to their ideas in monuments and imitations which might have been preserved to the present time, have in the extant fragments of their poetical literature left behind them confirmation of the fact that they conceived of the Sun and the Dawn in the same way. As they called the wind ‘winged,’ so that the monotheistic singer imagines Jahveh as ‘flying on the wings of the wind’ (Ps. XVIII. 11 [10]), so he binds wings also to the rapidly increasing light of the Dawn:—

If I take the wings of the Dawn, And go down at the uttermost parts of the sea.[326] Ps. CXXXIX. 9.

Jahveh ‘makes the Dawn _flying_’ (literally _for flight_), as the prophet Amos (IV. 13) says. The prophet speaks in this verse of the regular phenomena of nature, not of exceptional physical changes, which would allow us to take ʿêphâ as _obscuration_, as in Job X. 22; it is therefore best to keep to the sense of _flying_. Joel (II. 2) says, ‘As the Dawn, spreading out her wings over the mountains.’[327] Accordingly the Dawn or the Sun is a bird, and the Persian expression murġ-i-saḥar ‘Bird of the Dawn’ becomes intelligible. When the sun sets, the runner has stumbled and fallen to the ground; or the bird gliding through the air has lost its power of flight and fallen into the sea. Hence comes the use of ‘to fall’ of the setting sun: _cadit sol_, and in Homer:[328]—

Ἐν δ’ ἔπες’ Ὠκεανῷ λαμπρὸν φαὸς Ἢελίοιο, ἔλκον νύκτα μέλαιναν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν.

And in Arabic they say of the setting of the sun, wajabat al-shams, or habaṭat al-shams,[329] verbs which are synonymous with waḳaʿa, ‘to fall.’ We then understand (passing again to Hebrew) Isaiah’s exclamation (XIV. 12), ‘How art thou _fallen_ from heaven, _Light-bringer, son of the Dawn_!’

As the rising Dawn is said to spread out her wings, so the setting evening sun _drops_ her[330] pinions, bends her wings downwards. This expression, a relic of the mythic view, is retained in the Arabic language. The Arab says of the setting sun, janaḥat; but although this verb according to the lexicons denotes _inclinavit_ in general, yet there can be no doubt that this _inclinatio_ was originally something special, namely the bending of the wings, from whose name janâḥ, indeed, the above denominative verb is formed. Ḥassân b. Thâbit,[331] a poet contemporary with Moḥammed, says, ‘The sun of the day bent herself (i.e. bent her wings) that she might set’ (wa-ḳad janaḥat shams-al-nahâri litaġribâ). But when wings are attributed to the Night, the basis of the conception is quite different from that which gives wings to the Sun or the Dawn. In this case the thought is of covering and hiding.[332] In this sense are to be understood such phrases as kâna-l-leyl nâshiran ajniḥat al-ẓalâm, ‘Night unfolded the wings of darkness,’ or kâna-l-leyl ḳad asbala ʿala-l-châfiḳeyni ajniḥat al-ẓalâm, ‘Night had thrown down over the ends of the earth the wings of darkness.’[333] The frequent expression fî junḥ or jinḥ al-leyl certainly belongs to this category. Lexicographers who translate the word junḥ _pars noctis_, even on the authority of native lexicons, e.g. al-Jauharî, who explains it as ṭâʾifâ minhu ‘a portion of it,’[334] are mistaken. It must rather signify ‘under the wings of Night,’ which is also supported by the fact that, besides junḥ al-leyl, fî junḥ al-ẓalâm is also found,[335] where _wings_ only can be understood.[336]

From all this it is easy to perceive that the solar figures of the myth are brought into connexion with the idea of swiftness, flight, and constant marching forwards; for rapid motion is one of the chief attributes of the Sun which naturally present themselves to the eye and the mind. From this mythical view of the rapid running of the Sun may also be explained a feature in the German mythology which Holtzmann[337] leaves unexplained. ‘The _Osterhase_ [Easter-hare],’ he says, ‘is inexplicable to me; probably the hare is the animal of Ostara [the goddess]; on the picture of Abnoba a hare is present.’ If Ostara, as Holtzmann proves, is the sun or the sunrise, then the hare is easily explained as indicating the quick-footed sun. The connexion of ideas required to bring the hare into connexion with this view is one that needs no proof. In the hieroglyphs also, when there is free choice among various phonetic signs (e.g. with the vowel _u_), the figure of the hare is generally chosen when the word expresses a rapid motion.[338] So the Red Indians, in calling their Kadmus a great white hare, may have been influenced (independently of the false popular etymology of the word _michabo_[339]) by the conception of the Sun as a swift-footed hare.[340]

Abraham and his wife Sarah (the princess or queen of heaven—the Moon as we shall see) expel Hagar (Gen. XVI. 6). The Moon is jealous of Hagar. What does Hagar signify in this Hebrew myth? The cognate Arabic language offers the most satisfactory basis of interpretation of this name. Hajara, the root of the name Hâgâr, denotes ‘to fly,’ and yields the word hijrâ, ‘flight,’ especially known from the flight of Moḥammed from Mecca to Medina. The mythic designation Hâgâr is consequently only one of the names of the Sun in a feminine form. The battle of the two figures of the night-sky against Hagar is again that inexhaustible theme of all mythology, the battle of Day with Night. With respect to this particular name the Arabic language gives us still further light. While ġaṭasha denotes both ‘to be dark’ and ‘to move slowly,’ the hot noonday sun is described by the Arabs by the participle of the verb from which we have explained the name Hagar, _al-hâjirâ_ or _al-hijîrâ_ ‘the flying one.’ That this is not mere chance, but is connected with the mythical order of ideas from which we deduced the designation Hâgâr for the Sun, is further confirmed by the word barâḥi or birâḥ, also denoting ‘flight’ (from the Hebrew and Arabic root _brḥ_ ‘to flee’), and yet belonging to the nomenclature of the Sun.

The case is the same with the ‘fugitive and vagabond’ life of Cain; after the conquest of Abel the Sun wanders from place to place, and leads a life of unrest and motion till night comes. A reminiscence of the solar significance of Cain is even found in the Agâdâ, which makes the sign granted for the safety of Cain to consist in the brightening of the sun; or, according to another interpretation, in a horn, which grew up on him from the moment of the promise.[341] It is well known that the sun’s rays were mythologically called _horns_,—a meaning which the language preserved.

§ 6. With this group of Solar figures of the Hebrew mythology which are exhibited as _wandering_ or _rapidly marching forward_,[342] I also class some others whose names alone lead us to recognise this mythological character. First and foremost we must consider a word which has been retained in the language beyond the mythical stage: the Hebrew shachar, Arabic saḥar, ‘morning, dawn.’ This word is doubtless connected with the verb sâchar, which denotes constant moving, wandering.[343] The Arabic sâḥir ‘magician’ is the same word as the Hebrew sôchêr ‘merchant,’ both signifying originally those who are always travelling about from place to place. The Hebrew verb shachêr ‘to seek’ relates originally to the _movement_ of one who has lost something and goes about looking for it. Although in the course of this chapter I shall devote a special connected disquisition to Jacob’s sons, yet I must here pick out a few beforehand to incorporate them in the class of solar figures whose characteristic feature is that here discussed. To this class belongs e.g. Âshêr, the name of a son of Jacob by his concubine Zilpah. The name cannot be explained (according to Gen. XXX. 13) as the ‘Happy,’ or ‘Bringer of Happiness,’ since this signification of the root (‘to be happy’) is only secondary to the fundamental meaning—applied, not original. Language does not form originally expressions for ethical notions of this kind, any more than the notion itself rises without contact with something sensual, which may subsequently be transferred to the ethical. The Arabic words for similar ideas spring up in a similar way, e.g. muṣliḥ ‘successful’ denotes properly ‘one who _penetrates_ through something,’ &c. The root of Âshêr, in Hebrew âshar, in Arabic athara (whence athar ‘a trace’), originally denoted _to march, go forwards_ (Prov. IX. 6); intensively ashshêr, _to make_ some one _go forward, to lead_, and as a noun, ashûr ‘way, path.’ From the same root comes also the relative pronoun asher, which originally signified _place_, (compare the Aramaic athar ‘place’); but we know that expressions which serve as exponents of the category of _relation_, both in time and space, generally start from the conception of space, as is clearly seen in the Hebrew shâm, indicating originally the idea of place, ‘there’ but also transferred to the expression of the idea of time, ‘then.’[344] We see the same quite as clearly in the employment of the Aramaic athar in the combination bâthar (from ba-athar) to denote _after, afterwards_, properly _on the spot_.[345]

To this fundamental meaning of the root âshar ‘to march, go forward’ is added the secondary application ‘to be happy,’ properly ‘to advance prosperously.’ But the old mythical designation Âshêr is connected with the original sense: since at the time when this mythical word was first spoken the verb had not yet obtained its secondary sense, nor could yet obtain it, as ethical ideas were still non-existent. Accordingly Âshêr signifies ‘he who marches on,’ and is simply a solar name. Thus the ancient Hebrew called the Sun, when he noticed the continual change of his place on the horizon, and observed his constant movement. ‘Through Asher,’ it is said, in a fragmentary hymn on Asher in Gen. XLIX. 20, ‘his bread is fat; he gives dainties for a king;’ for the sun is to the agriculturist the beneficent element that hastens the ripening of his crops.

This simple and, I hope, obvious explanation throws light on another expression in Hebrew mythology, which stands in the closest connexion with Asher. I mean the feminine form derived from the masculine sun, the appellation Ashêrâ, on which Biblical interpreters and antiquaries have had so much to say. Ashêrâ, as the feminine form of Âshêr, denotes what the Hebrews regarded as the marriage-consort of the Sun. We know this of the Moon, as I hope to show more fully in speaking of Sarah. Ashêrâ is, therefore, an old Hebrew name of the Moon. In those passages of the Old Testament which speak of the idolatry of the Hebrews in Canaan, Asherah is named with Baal (the Sun-god): ‘The vessels that were made for Baal and for Asherah and for all the host of heaven’ (as though for Sun, Moon, and Stars), 2 Kings XXIII. 4; ‘And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jahveh, and forgat Jahveh their God, and served Baal and Asherah,’ Judges III. 7. They probably served Asherah too at the altar of Baal (see Judges VI. 25); but this is quite in the spirit of the Canaanitish and Mesopotamian religious practice. One mode of doing homage to the supreme God was to offer sacrifices and build temples to his subordinate deity, just as any honour conferred on the Satraps conduced to the greater excellence of the ‘King of kings.’ This view is very general on the votive tables with cuneiform inscriptions; so e.g. in an inscription in the Temple of Mugheir: ‘_In honore_ SIN _domini deorum coeli et terrae, regis deorum ... templum_ Iz _deae magnae condidi et feci_.’

Asherah is accordingly the _Wandering one_, and the moon is here made feminine. A masculine word for the Moon, which, being common to all the Semitic dialects (unlike the later, lebhânâ), must be one of the oldest Semitic names for _moon_, viz. yârêach, expresses the same idea; for it is derived from the noun ôrach, ‘a path, way,’ and stands for ôrêach with the initial hardened[346] (like yâchîd ‘only,’ with initial y, yet echâd ‘one;’ and yâshâr ‘straight,’ connected with the root under discussion, âshar ‘to go forwards’). In Job XXXI. 26, the epithet hôlêkh, ‘marching,’ is applied to the moon. Therefore the two plural forms ashêrîm and ashêrôth are not identical (the former denoting _objects of worship_, and the latter as ‘femininum vilitatis’ declaring them to be in the opinion of the writer _objects of abomination_);[347] but the masculine form is derived from the singular Âshêr, and the feminine from the singular Ashêrâ.

§ 7. To the same series belong also the names Dân and Dînâ, which latter is only a feminine to the first, and occurs again as a proper name in Arabic.[348] It would be erroneous to regard the verb dîn ‘to judge’ as the etymon: for this would give no solution of the question concerning the nature and signification of the designations under review. Then, as the Hebrew language itself offers no satisfactory _points d’appui_, we are fully entitled to look for information to the cognate idioms. I believe that the fundamental idea contained in the group of consonants _Dn_ is extant in the Assyrian, where it expresses the idea of _going_;[349] whence the Arabic dâna ‘to approach,’ the secondary dana, and the adjective dunya, which denotes the near and visible world, in opposition to al-âchirâ, the life beyond.[350] Consequently, Dân and Dînâ must denote ‘he or she who marches on, or comes nearer,’ or ‘goes’ in general, synonymous with Âshêr, i.e. the Sun. In Arabic also al-jâriyâ ‘who goes’ is one of the many names of the Sun which are enumerated by Ibn al-Sikkît in his Synonymical Dictionary of the Arabic Language.[351] Whilst of Dan no actual myth has reached us, and etymology alone gives us any help in discovering his mythical character, of Dinah on the other hand the chief source of our knowledge of Hebrew antiquity has preserved a more material statement, telling of the love of Shechem for Dinah and their ultimate union, and of the immediately following murder of Shechem by Jacob’s sons. These are the features which come under our view when we draw out the mythical kernel from the mass of epical description surrounding it (Gen. XXXIV). From the arguments of the Second Chapter the connexion of the noun shekhem with the verb hishkîm may surely be treated as removed beyond all doubt, as well as the fact that this word is a designation of the Morning-dawn. I will add at this place, to complete what was discussed at p. 26, that the Hebrew word shekhem seems to be etymologically connected with the Arabic thakam, which signifies ‘way.’ Like most Hebrew words denoting a _way_, this word shekhem must stand in connexion with the verbal idea of ‘marching forwards’—either by the verb being a _denominative_ (like the German _bewegen_ from _Weg_), or inversely by the noun being a _deverbal_. The changes of consonants which we find here are in accordance with the law of the Semitic languages, namely:

Arabic ث th Hebrew שׁ sh Aramaic ת t, th

ﺛﻝﺍﺜة שְׁלשָׁה shelôshâ תְּלָתָא telâthâ thalâthâ

ﺛوﺮ thaur שׁוֹר shôr תּוֹרָא tôrâ

Therefore also:

ﺛكم thakam = שְׁכֶם shekhem ——

The longing love of the Dawn for the Sun and her union with him—the same theme which Max Müller in his essay on ‘Comparative Mythology’ has so ingeniously traced in Indian and Hellenic myths—was told also by the Hebrews; only that the Hebrew inverted the relation. When the Dawn vanished and the Sun began to shine bright in the sky, the Hebrew said of the union between the Dawn and the Sun that the Dawn snatched up the Sun to himself and was united with her. Not long afterwards followed the vengeance taken by the sons of Jacob (the night-sky), who, enraged at the abduction of their sister, murder the ravisher and deliver her. This is only the disappearance of the Sun, while the evening glow comes forward, again independent, to inaugurate the dominion of the Night.[352] The myth makes no distinction between the morning and the evening glow, but treats them as identical phenomena. Therefore Shekhem is made a son of the Ass (Chamôr); and there is no doubt that chamôr (ass) has here the mythic significance which accompanies that animal whenever it appears in the Aryan mythology.[353]

Zilpah also, the mother of Asher, is to be classed in the same group. Any one who has cast even a superficial glance on the real meaning of the myths of the Aryan nations, as now discovered and recognised, must have noticed the peculiarity that the mythical relation of child to parent does not always indicate a succession of what should precede and what follow, but that the child is not unfrequently only a repetition of the father or the mother, and is therefore to be considered identical with them.[354] The present is a case of this kind. Âshêr is only a repetition of his mother. The designation Zilpâ, the explanation of which has been sought in vain in Hebrew—for the meaning ‘a drop’ can hardly be maintained—finds a smooth and ready interpretation in Arabic, where zalafa, as well as _zlp_, _zlb_ in Assyrian,[355] denotes ‘to march on.’ So that Zilpâ also is ‘she that marches forward.’ Another ‘marcher forward’ is preserved by Arabian tradition, viz. Zalîchâ. She is unmistakably a solar figure, and her name (_zlch_ has the same signification ‘to march forward’) is perhaps even formally connected[356] with that of Zilpâ, with whom she is identical. The battle of the Sunshine with the Rainy Sky is the amorous contest of the beautiful Zalîchâ (or, as the name is commonly but erroneously pronounced, Zuleychâ) with Yôsêph ‘the Multiplier.’ Now, having been led into the above digressions by the explanation of Cain’s flight, we return to Cain again.

§ 8. We have just alluded to the fact that in the Hebrew mythology the figures presented as children are frequently only _repetitions_ of one of their parents.[357] This observation is found to be confirmed in the case of the posterity which the Biblical genealogy in Gen. IV. derives from Cain. Some of the descendants of Cain are quite as much solar figures as their ancestor himself; and in an age which had advanced beyond the stage of the formation of myths, and even beyond the after-sentiment of mythology, this identity occasioned the idea that these figures must stand in a genealogical connexion with the ancestor. The same psychological process which in the employment of language produces a specialisation or limitation in the sense of words originally synonymous, is at work here also, forming from the numerous synonyms of mythology genealogies, in which identical designations, after their substratum has been personified, become his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. Thus among Cain’s descendants none but solar figures are to be found. In the demonstration of this fact, I limit myself to those names which can be interpreted without at all forcing their meaning. The very first, Enoch (Chanôkh), the son of Cain, from whom he names the first city he built, is of pure solar significance. We have above already, with Ewald, put his name in the class in which the Sun is presented as the ‘Opener.’ The solar character of Enoch admits of no doubt. He is brought into connexion with the building of towns—a solar feature. He lives exactly three hundred and sixty-five years, the number of days of the solar year; which cannot be accidental.[358] And even then he did not die, but ‘Enoch, _walked_ with Elôhîm, and was no more [to be seen], for Elôhîm took _him away_.’ In the old times when the figure of Enoch was imagined, this was doubtless called Enoch’s Ascension to heaven, as in the late traditional legend. Ascensions to heaven are generally acknowledged to be solar features. Herakles among the Greeks, Romulus the city-founder among the Latins, and several heroes of American mythology,[359] agree in this. The same feature also often attaches itself even to historical persons—e.g. to the legend of the Prophet Elijah, the ‘hairy man’ who ascends to heaven on ‘a chariot of fire and horses of fire,’[360] indeed this as well as other mythical features has been better preserved in the case of this favourite hero of Israelitish prophecy than in that of the former purely mythical personage.

Wachsmuth[361] expressed a conjecture that the old Greek god Helios, who drives round the vault of heaven on a fiery chariot, has a share in the phenomenon, so frequent in modern Greece, that the prophet Ilias (Elias or Elijah) is especially venerated on mountain-tops. The temples and altars of Helios in ancient times were similarly situated on high hills; and the casual similarity of sound between Ilios and Ilias, together with the identity of the myths concerning each, in this case caused the old heathen worship to be preserved and transferred to the name of the Biblical prophet. But this certainly cannot have taken place, as Otto Keller lately flippantly declared in a lecture on the ‘Discovery of Troy by Henry Schliemann,’ 'from a sort of childish attention to the wants of great Prophet, inasmuch as the people wished to make the fiery journey as easy as possible for him, and therefore made him mount the chariot at the nearest point to heaven.[362]

Enoch (Chanôkh) is introduced in another version of the genealogy (Gen. V. 18), as son not of Cain but of Jered, who is separated by five generations from Seth, Adam’s third son. But this genealogy has but little importance for mythological investigation; indeed its two chief original creations (Seth and Enos), do not belong to mythology at all. The feeling of a later time rebelled against deriving all mankind from the hated fratricide who bore the curse of God, and thus gave rise to the two interpolated patriarchs and the Seth-genealogy, which runs parallel with that of Cain: moreover, in proof of the honourable origin of mankind, the son of Seth was made the author of the worship of Jahveh, which is said to have begun in his time. The Seth-genealogy, which answered better to the feeling and the ethical need of mankind, then utterly expelled the Cain-genealogy. The author of the Book of Chronicles, who knows only Adam, Seth, Enos, &c. as first-fathers, seems either not to have known or intentionally to have ignored the other genealogy, and keeps strictly to that in Gen. V. It is remarkable that even in the Seth-genealogy among the ancestors of Enoch a Cainan (קֵינָן Ḳênân) is named—a word which will be recognised by everyone who knows the laws of the Semitic formation of words as a so-called nunnated form of the word קַיִן Ḳayin, so that the two are really perfectly identical.[363]

Let us continue the consideration of Cain’s descendants. One prominent figure is Lemech.[364] An obscure song, which he declaims before his two wives, has given the interpreters much trouble with regard both to its language and to its subject; and legend has made free with this song, as it has with anything problematical. For us here this only is important, that the song contains a self-accusation on the part of Lemech before his wives, of having killed his own child. As Jephthah killed his daughter, so the myth spoke of Lemech as a similar solar hero who killed his child. The Sun today kills her child, the Night, whom she bore yesterday evening. Among the children of Lemech we actually find Jabal (Yâbhâl), of whom we have already spoken at length as denoting the Rainy Sky. No doubt the ancient myth spoke of Jabal as the son who was murdered by his solar father Lemech. Accordingly, the genealogy does not continue the line of Jabal. Next to him his brother Jubal (Yûbhâl), inventor of musical instruments, the Hebrew Apollo, is mentioned. It is to solar gods such as Apollo, and heroes, that the invention of music, a product of the settled mode of civilised life, was everywhere attributed. But his name seems to have been chosen only on account of its assonance to Jabal (a favourite practice with the Semites), and not to belong to the ancient myth, but to owe its origin to the later legend of civilisation.

That the brothers Tubal-cain and Jabal are only a repetition of Cain and Abel I think I have already made evident. It must here be added that the mother of Tubal-cain, the solar man, is named Zillah (Ṣillâ), ‘she who _covers_, _overshadows_’—the Night, mother of the Sun or of the Day. The Seth-genealogy concludes with one who is called son of Lemech—Noah (Nôach), the founder of improved agriculture, who ‘gave men rest from their work and the toil of their hands proceeding from the earth which Jahveh cursed’ (V. 29). What else can this mean, but that Noah invented agricultural implements? The Seth-genealogy accordingly disputes the invention of these by Cain or Tubal-cain, and gives to the etymology of the name Nôach, which really does denote ‘rest,’ an application which makes it as impossible for it to belong to the ancient myth as for the names Shêth and Enôsh. Noah is a regular hero of the legend of civilisation; and the larger part of what the myth tells of him is a product of the victory of Solarism, i.e. of agricultural life. He is the first vine-grower, and a new ancestor of the human race, since all mankind is derived from his three sons. The regular operation of the laws of nature (Gen. VIII. 22), and social order and legality, are also brought into connexion with him. The protection and forbearance, secured to the beasts by the Nomad, ceases; the Agriculturist subdues the beasts. But, on the other hand, with him begins the protection and security of human life (Gen. IX. 2–5). Yet side by side with this legend of civilisation we have in connexion with Noah a true _old_ solar myth, which well deserves attention. After the introduction of vine-cultivation Noah once makes overfree use of his discovery and gets drunk; and in that condition ‘uncovers himself—takes off his clothes (Gen. IX. 21). Only this last feature has any mythological interest; for the previous one, which was attached to this germ, belongs to another and later stage of formation of legends, since nothing could be told of intoxication till the free use of wine was known and practised. The word Nôach denotes 'him who _rests_.’ While the Sun of Day is called ‘he who _goes_, _runs_, _wanders_,’ the Evening Sun, preparing to set, is ‘he who _rests_.’ ‘Noah uncovers himself:’ after setting, the Sun is shrouded in a covering which darkens his light, but in the morning he throws off the clothes and becomes visible, spreading light and brightness abroad. In a hymn to Ushas, the Dawn, the ancient Indian poet says that she ‘uncovers her bosom’ (Rigveda, VI. 64. 2, 10). If the intoxication is also to be accounted for, then this prominent circumstance must describe the reeling motion with which the Sun, exhausted by his long course, staggers towards his repose. The Agadic tradition has preserved another element of the Noah-myth. The wicked black son Ham (Châm), emasculates his father (Sanhedrîn, 70 a). The emasculation of the Sun, when the Sun is male, is an expression of Aryan mythology denoting the weakening of his rays before and at sunset.[365] The black son, the Night, overcomes and emasculates his father, takes all power from his rays and drives him to ruin.

§ 9. Thus we find Cain’s posterity to be repetitions of their ancestor, mere solar figures of the old myth, brought by an unmythological age into a genealogical connexion with the wandering and fratricidal solar hero. It is the genealogy of the solar figures to which the data of the legend of civilisation are attached; for the agriculturist always puts civilisation into conjunction with the sun.[366] But besides this solar pedigree, we possess also a nomadic one, starting from the myth of the dark Night-sky—the genealogy of Abram (Gen. XI 10 sq.), which begins with his ancestor Shem. But the name Shêm has the same signification as Abhrâm itself, according to the lexicon. As Abhrâm is the ‘_High_ Father,’ so also the name Shêm denotes the ‘High;’ and from this name the Semitic appellation of heaven, Hebrew shâmayim, Arabic samâ, is derived. Like Abram, Abel, Jabal, Jacob, Lot &c., Shem too possesses tents. ‘Elôhîm opens out (room) for Jepheth;[367] he (Jepheth) dwells in the tents of Shem’ (Gen. XI. 27), is said in the extant fragment of an ancient hymn. Jepheth (Yepheth) signifies the ‘Beautiful, Brilliant,’ if it is connected with yâpheh; or ‘who spreads himself out,’ if the root pâthâh is its origin; or ‘who opens,’ if with Gesenius and some later writers we lay stress on the connexion of the sounds of pâthâh with pâthach; but in any case it is a solar name. As the sun of the daytime is observed wandering from place to place, it is not an unnatural idea that the sun takes up his abode in the _tents_ of high heaven. ‘For the sun he made a tent in them (the heavens).’[368]

It cannot be denied that in Abraham’s genealogy, as given in the Book of Genesis, there occur some ethnographical appellations which have no mythological meaning (e.g. Arpachshad). Still, the majority of names are of a mythical character. Unfortunately, they must remain mere names to us, as no material myth connected with these names is extant. Although they seem to invite etymological attempts, as e.g. the names Shelach and ʿÊbher, yet I shall resist the temptation, as it is not my business here to indulge in vague speculations. But I may be allowed to remark that there is one sentence in this genealogy which reflects the nomad’s life again. ‘Peleg begat Reʿû:’ that is, taking these words, as they were originally understood, appellatively and translating them literally, ‘The stream produces the pasture-land;’ the nomad owes his meadow-land to the stream that meanders through the pasture and keeps the grass fresh and green. So instead of ‘to lead the cattle to pasture,’ he says also, ‘to lead them to the waters of rest.’ The psalmist of Ps. XXIII. 1, 2, says ‘Jahveh is my shepherd, I want nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me to waters of rest.’

§ 10. We will now continue our contemplation of the contests which the myth tells of the sky at night, in which we have already seen the dark sky either conquering or conquered by his brilliant father or brother. One of the most conspicuous names of the dark sky of night or clouds in the Hebrew mythology, and containing a rich fund of mythical matter, is Jacob. Etymologically we have already done justice to him. Now let us see what the myth has to say of him. He endures hard struggles. His father, ‘the _laughing_ sunny sky,’ loves him not. The hatred of his brother Esau drives him from house and home; and at the place where he takes refuge, he has to struggle against ‘the white one’ (Lâbhân), who, if not his brother, is at least his near relative, and in the original form of the myth was perhaps presented as his brother (see Gen. XXIX. 15). We must examine more closely the mythical character of these two hostile brothers of Jacob. To make short work of it—both Esau and Laban are solar figures. What we learn of them in the epic treatment of the old myth found in the Old Testament, presents a multitude of solar characteristics. We especially note this in Esau, whose _heel Jacob grasps at their birth_ (Gen. XXV. 26). This mythical expression is in itself clear enough: ‘Night comes into the world with Day’s heel in his hand,’ or, as we should say, Night follows close upon Day, driving him from his place. Nevertheless, we can further confirm this signification of the mythical expression for the benefit of hesitating doubters by showing that the same conception is found even in the later Arabic poetry, where it is doubtless a residuum of an old mythical idea. For Thaʿlabâ b. Ṣuʿeyr al-Mâzinî[369] says of the breaking of the dawn: ‘The shining one stretches his right hand towards him who covers up;’ the Sun puts out his hand towards the Night, grasps him, and pulls him forward, whilst he himself retires; here therefore it is the same relation, only inverted. Similarly, the poet al-ʿAjjâj says: ‘till I see the shoulder of the brilliant dawn, when he springs upon the back of the black night.’[370] This is spoken in quite a mythical tone, and expresses the same idea as the Hebrew when he said ‘Jacob holds the heel of his red brother in his hand,’ only that the Arabic words quoted speak of day following after night.

‘Esau is a hunter, Jacob a herdsman, dwelling in tents.’ _The Sun is a hunter_: he discharges his arrows, i.e. his rays, and does battle with them against darkness, wind and clouds. Why should I adduce examples from Aryan mythology, where this view occurs in manifold variations and is one of the commonest?[371] The Sun’s arrows are golden, wherefore Apollo is called χρυσότοξος Πύθιος (Pindar, _Ol_. XIV. 15). This mythical idea is frequently reflected in the composition of language. In Egyptian, the combination _st_ denotes ‘flame, ray, and arrow,’ all at once; and the Slavonic strêla, with which the German _Strahl_ ‘ray’ is connected, means ‘arrow.’[372]

‘The Sun can no longer bend his bow’ = he has lost his power, is therefore an expression for the setting of the sun. When Herakles finds himself too weak to bend his bow and shoot his arrows, he feels that his end is approaching. When the Sun regains his powers at the outburst of spring, after a long winter in which his arrows had been at rest, Odysseus (Ulysses), a solar wanderer like Cain, seizes his bow to shoot off his shafts again.[373] We see the same in the myths of the Semites. An epithet of the Sun-god Bêl is Nipru, which, according to Sir Henry Rawlinson, signifies ‘hunter;’[374] and the city Resen, the building of which is attributed in the Bible to Nimrod, is called in the historical cuneiform inscriptions the ‘City of the Hunter.’[375] This Nimrod himself, against whom Abraham the Nomad contends in the same sense in which Jacob the Nomad against Esau the Hunter, is a hunter (Gen. X. 9). The etymological explanation of the name Nimrôd cannot be established until the really primary signification of the root mârad has been satisfactorily traced; for it may be considered certain, that at the myth-creating stage mankind had no sense of the idea of ‘insurrection,’ which could only be formed after some advance in social life, and could not therefore endow a word with that special meaning. This signification can consequently only be secondary and metaphorical.[376] As to the grammatical form of the name Nimrôd, it is not impossible that, like Yiṣchâk ‘Isaac,’ Yiphtâch ‘Jephthah,’ &c., it is a verbal form. If so, it would be the third person of the imperfect, formed by prefixing _n_, as in Aramaic. Schrader[377] regards this prefixed _n_ in Nimrôd as a sound used for the formation of _nouns_. I will also call to mind incidentally that on Babylonian ground we meet also with the name of a god Merôd.[378] The wars of Nimrod with Abraham are not preserved in the Old Testament, but are in Agadic tradition, which has also retained from the Nimrod-myth an expression of a truly solar character; that _three hundred and fifty kings_ sit before Nimrod, to serve him.[379] Similarly against Joseph, the giver of increase, the rainy sky, fight ‘the _men with arrows_’[380] (baʿalê chiṣṣîm, Gen. XLIX. 23), ‘who exasperate him and _shoot_ and persecute him.’ So again Jacob fights against Esau the _hunter_. It is always the battle of the sky of Night and Clouds against the Sun, who sends his arrows to repel the invader. One somewhat more complicated mythological conception having reference to the arrows of the sun is found on Hebrew ground. The sun and the moon stand still, and then go in the direction of the arrows which were sent off before them. This view is known to poetry, except that there it is Jahveh who shoots the arrows, so that the sun and moon

Walk to the light of thy (Jahveh’s) arrows, To the brightness of the glitter of thy spear.—_Hab._ III. 11.

The rays of the moon also are here designated arrows.

_Esau is a hairy man, Jacob a smooth man_ (Gen. XXVII. 11). ‘_The first came out red, quite like a hairy mantle_’ (XXV. 25). For the present we will put the redness aside, and pay particular attention to the element of hairiness. Long locks of hair and a long beard are mythological attributes of the Sun. The Sun’s rays are compared with locks or hairs on the face or head of the Sun.

Helios is called by the Greeks the _yellow-haired_; and in Greek poetry χρυσοκόμης or ἀκερσοκόμης is a frequent epithet of solar gods and heroes. A Latin poet also calls the sun’s rays _Crines Phoebi_.[381] In an American legend the Sun-god Bocsika is introduced as an old man with a long beard; the Viracochaya of the Peruvians, the Quetzalcoatl of the Toltecs, the Coxcox of the Chichimecs, solar figures all of them, possess this strongly emphasized characteristic of the long beard.[382] Indeed, this feature is sometimes ascribed in popular fancy to historical personages, as e.g. to Julius Caesar, who was imagined to have been born with long hair; and his name was popularly explained from this circumstance—_caesaries_.

We must here consider a point in the history of Art, which occupied archeologists about the years 1820–30, and especially the meritorious numismatist Ekhel. I refer to the representation of Janus as _biceps_, _vultu uno barbato_, _altero imberbi_, which some regarded as the old traditional conception of Janus, while others thought it comparatively modern; the question of age is, however, not a question of principle at all.[383] In any case it may be assumed as probable that this picture of the two-headed ‘Opener,’[384] is not an accidental idea, devoid of all mythical import; but that on the contrary, the two bearded and beardless representations of the Sun-god express two points in the Sun’s life; he appears in the morning and evening (as ‘Opener’ and ‘Closer,’ _Janus Patulcius_ and _Janus Clusius_) with smooth, beardless face, i.e. without powerful rays, but in the middle of the day with a large beard and hairy face.[385]

When the Sun sets and leaves his place to the darkness, or when the powerful summer sun is succeeded by the weak rays of the winter sun, then Samson’s long locks,[386] in which alone his strength lies, are cut off through the treachery of his deceitful concubine Delilah, the ‘languishing,[387] languid,’ according to the meaning of the name (Delîlâ).[388] The Beaming Apollo, moreover, is called the Unshaven; and Minos cannot conquer the solar hero Nisos, till the latter loses his golden hair.[389]

It is then clear what the description of Esau as a man born hairy in contradistinction to the smooth Jacob denotes—the same as the epithet îsh baʿal sêʿâr ‘hairy man’ (2 Kings I. 8) in the description of Elijah: the rays of the sun, whose mythical representative Esau is. It is a more difficult question whether the solar character of this hero is capable of proof from his name. If, not to have recourse to non-Hebraic languages, we derive ʿÊsâv from the Hebrew verb ʿâsâ ‘to do, accomplish,’ and explain it as the ‘Accomplisher, Worker,’ or the like, then this description of a solar hero is suitable enough for a legend of civilisation, which sees in the sun the power that brings to perfection the corn and fruit, and produces in human society a legally secured condition of social life, in short, the Perfecting Agent. But such a description is less consonant with the sense possible to the ancient myth, in which the ideas and conceptions just mentioned were not yet developed. If then the name ʿÊsâv cannot be etymologically explained in the spirit of the oldest mythical circle of ideas, we are necessarily driven to conjecture that the appellation does not belong to the oldest stratum of the materials of Hebrew legends, but was introduced by a legend of civilisation. This conjecture appears all the more probable when we remember that Jacob’s hostile brother in the Bible itself bears another name besides Esau, much more expressive and suited to the earliest period of the formation of legends; namely, Edôm ‘the Red.’ In later times, when the original signification of the myths was entirely forgotten, these two names Esau and Edom were found in the story of the brothers’ quarrel, as appellations of the brother with whom Jacob fights. Attempts were made to harmonise them; and the name ‘the Red’ was connected with the _red_ pottage (Gen. XXV. 30), as well as with the more characteristic feature belonging to the old mythic stage, that the hostile brother was admônî, ‘of a reddish colour.’ But the name Esau also can be rescued for the old myth, if we connect this name with the Arabic aʿtha ‘hairy,’ which is etymologically related to the name Esau.[390] Thus the name Esau would come in contact with the above-discussed mythic characteristic of the Solar hero, that he is an îsh sêʿâr, a hairy man.[391] In the Phenician mythology the antagonist of Usov (whom those who do not utterly reject the authenticity of the statements of Sanchuniathon identify with Esau) lives in tents and is called Shâmînrûm ‘the high heaven,’[392] i.e. the dark night-sky. The identity of the conceptions _Abh-râm_ and _Yaʿakôbh_ would find further confirmation here. We are led to a different series of solar characteristics by the name Edôm, an unquestionably ancient designation of the Solar hero. We will consider together the names Edôm and Lâbhân, both appellations of hostile brothers of the Night-Sky. But before we begin this, I will mention another contest of Jacob’s, to which the original writer devotes only a few lines: ‘Then Jacob remained behind alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the morning rose. And he saw that he could not do anything to him, so he knocked his thigh-socket, and Jacob’s thigh-socket was dislocated in wrestling with him. And he said, Let me go, for the morning has risen’ (Gen. XXXII. 25–27 [24–26]). Thus Jacob fights with a man who cannot conquer him, but whom he must let off at the rise of the morning. This is the Dawn, who wrestles with the end of the night, and in the end breaks loose, so as to go up to the sky. The Night is a _limping_ figure (ver. 32 [31]). This again is a feature in the myth of the hero of darkness, which we meet with also in classical mythology, e.g. in Hermes, κυλλοποδύων.[393] It probably indicates the opposite to the swiftness and the rapid never-ceasing course of the day, the sun and the dawn.

§ 11. Jacob is pursued and made to fight by the _Red_ and by the _White_. Both words are designations of the same thing, _i.e._ the Sun. It strikes us as very strange that the myth should call the same object now red, now white. To appreciate this fact, we must think of the various stages which the sense of colour has to pass through in old times, until it is fully developed. Even in much later times we come across extraordinary fluctuations of language on Semitic ground in the designation of colours for solar phenomena. As the demonstration of this fact appears important to our present subject and things in connexion with it, the reader will excuse me for pausing longer than usual at this point and taking some excursions from the centre of our investigations. The names of colours were in ancient times very vague; the primitive man could not elevate himself to make any sharply defined distinction and classification of colours. _Red_ and _white_ are therefore here not exactly red and white, according to our modern distinction of these colours, but rather _light_ or _bright-coloured_. It is a great merit of the late Lazarus Geiger, too early called home, to have most clearly exhibited this phase of the history of the development of ideas and their expression in language, and illustrated it with the light of psychology and comparative philology.[394] His ingenious researches have raised to a certainty the theory that the capacity for distinguishing colours has arisen, both in the individual and in the whole race, in the course of history, through gradual general development; that its beginning follows very late after the beginnings of other intellectual capacities; and that, even after man had grasped the distinction of different classes of colour, the _fixing_ of his conceptions of colour made very slow progress, so that he often attributes first one and then another colour to the same object. The shading-off of colours, when once understood, has yet been fixed in the human mind with such difficulty, that we find in many languages the most helpless wavering in the use of names of colours. As this phenomenon, important in man’s mental development, is no less so in relation to the origin and the understanding of the elements of myths, we will pause over Geiger’s disquisitions, to consider still further the fluctuating nature of the designations of colour in language, and especially to notice how far from clear and unsullied a reflexion impressions of colour cast on language, their natural medium of expression. We will however stay in the neighbourhood of the proper subject of investigation, and bring only Semitic words under consideration. Let us pick out the designations of Gold in this field. We cannot say in general terms of the Semitic languages that in the designation of gold and silver they do not express the optical difference between them, as a scholiast remarks in reference to Homer; for the appellations both of gold as _brilliant_, _shimmering_, and of silver as _pale_, prove that at least the different shine of the two metals was observed at the stage of the formation of language.[395] Far less definite, however, than this distinction of the two according to the general impression made on the sight, is the designation of the sensation made by each separately. The appellations of gold in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, zâhâbh, dahabhâ, ḏahab, denote _brilliant_ in general; whereas the Assyrian and Phenician[396] word for gold, ḥuraṣu (which is the same as the Hebrew chârûṣ), expresses no optical sensation.[397] The former appellations describe an optical sensation; but no definite colour-sensation. Indeed, even a late Arabic poet says of gold: al-ḏahab al-nârî,[398] ‘the _fire-like_ gold,’ which, if a description of colour, is a very vague one. Ruʾbâ b. al-ʿAjjâj, an Arabic poet living in the second century of the Hijrâ, says:[399]

Hal yanfaʿunî kaḏabun sichtîtu * au fiḍḍatun au dahabun kibrîtu? Will a great lie save me? * or silver, or _sulphur-gold_?

Here gold and sulphur are compared together as similar, at all events in colour, for colour is the only possible _tertium comparationis_ between them; and in fact we also find in Arabic the expression ‘yellow sulphur, as if it were gold’ (kibrît aṣfar kaʾannahu ḏahab).[400] I lay particular stress upon this, because a common phrase among the Arabs is, al-kibrît al-aḥmar ‘red sulphur,’ to denote a peculiar person, one without his equal, inasmuch as there is no red sulphur. Now gold, of all things, is commonly used both in the later literature and in popular speech with the epithet _red_ (al-ḏahab al-aḥmar). This phrase, as Osiander has proved,[401] occurs also in Himyaric, and passed from Arabic into Persian and Turkish (in Persian zeri surch; in Turkish ḳizil altyn), and is used especially when minted gold is opposed to silver coins. The former is _red_ money, the latter _white_: e.g. wa-malaʾtum aydîkum min al-ḏahab al-aḥmar wal-fiḍḍâ al-beyḍâ ‘you have filled your hands with _red gold_ and _white silver_;’[402] dihhezâr dînâr zeri surch, ‘ten thousand dînârs of _red gold_.’[403] In a very noteworthy essay, Belin has shown with reference to Turkish that in the Ottoman Empire the metal money is divided into _white_, ‘aḳ,’ and _red_, ‘ḳizil’;[404] and in Egypt at the present day the silver piaster is called abyaḍ ‘white,’ to distinguish it from the copper money _chorde_. Muʿâwiyyâ said to Ṣaʿṣaʿâ, ‘Thou Red one;’ and he answered, ‘Gold is red.’[405] Thus we see that _red_ has become the constant designation of the colour of gold. Now in what harmony does this stand with the above-quoted designation, ‘sulphur-coloured gold,’ when we consider at the same time the proverbial kibrît aḥmar ‘red sulphur’?

Ethiopic designates gold, not by a derivative of the root ‘ḏhb,’ like the other languages of the same stock, but by the word waraḳ. We cannot decide _a priori_ whether in its origin this word expresses a colour-sensation or not. In Arabic also we find waraḳ or wariḳ in a similar signification, and I can scarcely believe that it must be thrown out of the original treasury of the Arabic vocabulary. Von Kremer classifies it with the Arabic words borrowed from the Persian stock, and refers it to the Huzwâresh _warg_.[406] In old time it was equivalent to ‘property, goods.’[407] The poet Suḥeym, an elder contemporary of Moḥammed, says in a little poem, ‘The poems of the slave of the Banû-l-Ḥasḥâs on the day of competition are worth as much as noble birth and waraḳ (property);[408] and in some of the traditional sayings of Moḥammed a collateral form of the same word, riḳâ, denotes 'money.’[409] The Arabic lexicographers give the signification of both forms as al-darâhim al-maḍrûbâ ‘stamped coins,’ drachmas. In the more general signification we find waraḳ used by Abû Nuwâs in a poem of youth or rather childhood. The poet Ibn Munâdir, finding little Abû Nuwâs leaning against a pillar in the mosque, took a great fancy to him, and addressed an erotic poem to him; upon which the boy extemporised the following verses, and wrote them on the back of the letter:

You write me a letter of praise without any waraḳ (present); That is like a house built on a foundation of reeds; But I should think it much pleasanter than your eulogy on me, If you would send me a pair of black shoes and a fine dress. If you are willing, do get me a waraḳ (present): if you do so I shall not turn you away.[410]

We see clearly from this example how general the meaning of waraḳ is in Arabic; even a pair of shoes and a dress are included in it. It is, however, probable that the word, which certainly comes from the south of Arabia, originally denoted specially _gold_, but being supplanted in this narrow sense by ḏahab in ordinary Arabic, was applied first to gold-money, then to money generally (even of silver), and lastly by a further generalisation to goods and objects of value of all kinds. Its South-Arabic origin is also confirmed by the fact that it occurs in Himyarite,[411] beside ḏahab and kethem; and there is no reason for supposing, with Halévy, that it denotes specially _de l’or en feuilles_, contrasted with _de l’or en poudre_.[412] On the other hand, it must be noticed that the root waraḳ in the Semitic languages designates a _colour_, either _green_ or _yellow_, and that it is probably owing to this circumstance that gold is in Ethiopic called waraḳ. But this word of colour itself is very fluctuating. Whilst in Ethiopic it designates the colour of gold, in Hebrew it gives a name to _grass_ (yereḳ), and similarly in Arabic the green leaves are called waraḳ, notwithstanding which its diminutive urayyiḳ[413] (from auraḳ) denotes a _dark brown_ camel; in irḳân it returns again to the notion _yellow_ or _reddish_. The Hebrew of the Talmûd and the Targûm employs yârôḳ (which in Biblical Hebrew is mostly used for _green_, but sometimes of a pale face for _yellow_, e.g. yêrâḳôn ‘jaundice’) chiefly for a green colour, of vegetables and precious stones;[414] nevertheless, we find in the Talmûd (Bab. Nedârîm, 32. a) hôrîḳân bezâhâbh ‘he made it yârôḳ with gold,’ i.e. made it yellow, gilded it. We have in Ps. LXVIII. 14 [13] yeraḳraḳ chârûṣ, _flavedo auri_. There is a noteworthy passage in Berêshîth rabbâ (sect. 4 near the end), in which the various colours of the sky are mentioned: red, black, white, and also yârôḳ.

The above remarks show how little consistency and distinctness there is in the relation of the names derived from colour to the various types of colour. The same result is reached when we inquire, with what designations of colour other objects are combined. For we find almost everywhere the greatest fluctuation, whether we consider the etymological value of the names themselves, or study the adjectives attached to them. In the most favourable cases only the class of colour—light or dark—is observed; but within the class nothing definite is found. Arabic especially is a field offering abundant matter for observation and demonstration, on which the excellent labours of Lazarus Geiger might be corroborated, completed and extended; but I cannot undertake such a task at this place. We will now limit our observations to the point which has to be established here: the views of colour which were attached to day and night, the sunny sky and the night-sky, the grey of the morning and the red of the evening.

In the Vedas, when day and night, sun and darkness, are opposed to each other, the one is designated _red_, the other _black_. ‘The gods have made the night and the dawn of different hue, and given them _black_ and _red_ colours’ (Rigveda, I. 73. 7). ‘The _red_ mother of the _red_ calf comes; the _black_ leaves his place to her’ (Rigveda, I., 113. 2). ‘The dawn comes forward, driving off _black night_’ (Rigveda, I. 92. 5: compare VI. 64. 3).[415] In Hebrew poetry we find no similar case, in which the opposite colours of the antagonistic forces are thus clearly set against one another. Indeed, we do not even find that a separate colour-epithet is given to each. Still it seems certain that at least Night was brought into connexion with the colour black;[416] otherwise a sentence such as ‘Darker than Blackness (châshakh mish-shechôr) is their form’ (Lam. IV. 8) would be impossible. We may infer from this that the notions of chôshekh ‘Darkness’ and shechôr ‘Blackness’ were closely connected together. This is in Arabic one of the commonest combinations. The dark night is sometimes called al-leyl al-ḥâlik—a word denoting the deepest shade of blackness. To the same class also belongs adʿaj (in leyl adʿaj ‘black night’), another adjective denoting _black_. Chudârîyya is an Arabic word which denotes both _raven_[417] and _night_ (one cannot help thinking of the Hebrew ʿerebh ‘evening’ and ʿôrêbh ‘raven’). The verb iktaḥal is used of Night: ‘She has coloured herself with the black dye[418] al-kuḥl, e.g. wa-l-ẓalâm iḏa-ktaḥal (Rom. of ʿAntar, VI. 53. 12). Poetry gives the same evidence as language itself. As in other literatures, so in Arabic, darkness is the term of comparison for everything black. The black hero of the best loved Arabic popular romance is pictured as 'black as the colour of darkness, riding on a horse which resembles the darkness of night’ (aswad kalaun al-ẓalâm ʿala jawâd min al-cheyl yaḥkî ẓalâm al-leyl: Rom. of ʿAntar, IV. 183. 14). This is the source of a poetic figure much used by Arabic poets in application to a mistress with light features and dark hair. So Bekr b. al-Naṭṭâḥ says (Ḥamâsâ, p. 566): ‘She is as white as if she were herself the brilliant noonday-sky, as if her _black_ hair were the _night_ which darkens it.’ The black hero ʿAntar, contrasting his own colour and that of his beloved ʿAblâ, compares himself regularly with the night, and her with the dawn (e.g. ʿAntar, VII. 136 penult.). She herself once addressed him thus, ‘Go, in the name of God, thou colour of night’ (sir fî âmâni-llâhi yâ laun al-duja, VI. 162. 4), and he often repeats the idea that his colour and that of night are the same. Thus (XVIII. 66. 12):

In akun yâ ʿAblata ʿabdan aswadâ * fasawâdu-l-leyli min baʿḍi ṣifâtî Wafachârî annanî yauma-l-liḳâʿi * yachḍaʿu-ṣ-ṣubḥu liseyfî wa-ḳanâti.

Though I am, ʿAblâ, a black slave, And the blackness of night is one of my qualities, Yet it is my boast that on the day of encounter The Dawn bows before my bow and spear.

As a black man is compared to night, so, inversely, the latter is likened to a black gipsy. Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, who is remarkable for accurate pictures of nature, says of the sky dazzling with stars, ‘This night is a Gipsy’s bride, decked out with pearls:’[419]

Leylatî hâḏihi ʿarûsun min az-zan- * ji ʿaleyhâ ḳalâʿidu min jumâni.[420]

On another occasion the same poet (II. 106. 4) compares the night to black _ink_:

Katabnâ wa-aʿrabnâ bi-ḥibrin min ad-duja * suṭûra-s-sura fî ẓahri beyḍâʾa balḳaʿi.

And one of the most ordinary descriptions of _darkening_ is that ‘Night put on her _black_ adornments.’[421] From all this it is seen that it is perfectly usual and matter-of-course to associate Night with the colour _Black_.[422] Indeed, by the Black the poet understands _par excellence_ Night. Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, the poet so frequently quoted in this section, says at one place (_ibid._ I. 131.2): ‘The _Black_ one, whose father is unknown to men, has shrouded me in clothes from himself (i.e. in black or dark ones).’ Nevertheless, we can convince ourselves here too, that even this point of the conception of colour is not devoid of fluctuation. For the blackness of night is not nearly so distinct a conception as ours when we speak of a black night. On the contrary, it is not yet separated from the general category of _dark colour_, to which green and blue also belong. When the land of the Banû Madhij was visited with drought, the tribe sent out three explorers (ruwwâd, from the singular râʾid), to look for suitable pasturage. One of them says in his report in praise of the splendid green meadows of the land he recommends, that the surface of the land is _like night_, so green is it.[423] Al-Afwah, a Preislamite Arabic poet and sage,[424] in a verse quoted by the lexicographer al-Jauharî (under the root _sds_), associates Night with the colour of _sudûs_. So also Abû Nucheylâ,[425] a later poet who lived under the Abbasid dynasty as their laureate, says ‘Put on as thy shirt Night, black and dark like the colour of _sundus_’:

Waddariʿî jilbâba leylin daḥmasi * aswada dâjin mithli launi-s-sundusi.[426]

Another anonymous poet, or rather verse-monger, says in the same sense ‘Among the nights a dark night, when the sky is like the colour of _sundus_’:

Waleylatin min-al-layâlî ḥindisi * launu ḥawâshîhâ kalaimi-s-sundusi.[427]

But sudûs and sundus denote a garment the colour of which is regularly mentioned as achḍar ‘greenish.’ So, e.g., twice in the Ḳorân (Sûr. XVIII. 30, LXXVI. 21), where the joys and delights of Paradise are described, _green sundus garments_ are promised to the faithful; and similarly in a tradition mentioned by al-Ġazâli[428] we find it said of men who become brethren in God, ‘Their beauty shines like the sun, and they are clothed in _green sundus garments_’ (wa-ʿaleyhim thiâb sundus chuḍr).

But this uncertainty of the colour which is associated with the Night is far less prominent than the fluctuation which prevails when the colour of the Day has to be described. In the former case, with a few exceptions based on the impression which a certain peculiar night may have made on the mind of the speaker or poet, black is by far the prevailing colour. Not so with the colour-distinctions of the solar phenomena. Here usage wavers among three colours, which are usually connected with the various stages of the Sun himself: _golden-yellow_, _red_, and _white_. The greatest definiteness is found to exist with reference to the first. It refers mostly to the dawn and sunset. In Aramaic the early morning is ṣafrâ. Etymologically this word is capable of many explanations which justify the above-expounded mythical conceptions of the dawn. It may be explained, as the soundest lexicographers on Semitic ground do explain it,[429] to denote _curled locks of hair_, or _one who springs, leaps_. Both explanations take us back to mythic attributes of the morning-sun; in the second we see the morning-sun springing up to heaven from behind the hills like a bird (ṣippôr). But I believe that the word ṣafrâ is related to aṣfar, a colour-name in Arabic, which, though like all such it has an extremely vague signification, and may even mean _nigredo_, prevailingly indicates a golden-yellow colour. Now while the Aramaic ṣafrâ is exclusively the morning-sun (compare Ἢὼς κροκόπεπλος, Iliad, VIII. 1, and μελάμπεπλος of the night), in Arabic the colour-word in question is prevailingly applied to the evening-sun: ‘Until upon him came the end of the day, and the Sun put on the garment of yellowness’ (ila an atâ ʿaleyhi âchir al-nahâr wa-labisat al-shams ḥullat al-iṣfirâr, Rom. of ʿAntar, VI. 244. 1). Another example, in which the succession of time comes out with still greater clearness, is: ‘They had defeated al-Noʿmân at noon; then they took rest till the Sun put on the garment of yellowness, and towards evening dust appeared before them’ (wa-kânû ḳad sabaḳû al-Noʿmân bi-niṣf al-nahâr wa-achaḏû râḥâ ḥatta labisat al-shams ḥullat al-iṣfirâr wa-ʿind al-masâ ṭalaʿ ʿaleyhim ġobâr, Rom. of ʿAntar, VI. 35. 2). It is remarkable that in Egyptian the setting sun is said to throw out rays of _tahen_—a metal distinguished for its saffron colour, which is frequently contrasted with the colour red.[430] Chabas finds this contrast to constitute a difficulty in the comparison with the setting sun. Semitic analogies, however, show that the association of saffron colour with the sun, especially the evening-sun, is not confined to Egyptian. No case on Arabic ground is as yet known to me in which this yellowish colour, al-iṣfirâr, is attributed to any other stage of the sun’s course except the evening. But there is the word aṣbaḥ (from ṣubḥ ‘the early morning’) ‘morning-coloured,’ used of the lion, which is said to denote a colour near to aṣfar.[431] At all events, the Aramaic ṣafrâ and the Arabic usage teach us that a yellow colour is in Semitic an attribute of both the morning- and the evening-sun. It is very different with the two other colours, white and red. There we meet with greater fluctuations. Sometimes the morning-sun is described as white, in comparison with the sun of the advanced day; sometimes the former is bright red and the latter white:

Kaʾanna sana-l-fajreyni lammâ tawâlayâ * damuʾl-achaweyni zaʿfarâni wa-aydaʿî. Afâḍa ʿala tâlîhima-ṣ-ṣubḥu mâʾahu * faġayyara min ishrâḳi aḥmara mushbaʿi.

As if the light of the two daybreaks when they follow one after the other Were the blood of the two brothers saffron and red. The dawn poured its waters over the latter, And changed into white its deep red.[432]

At its very first appearance the morning-dawn is of saffron colour, then a bright red comes, and the further the day advances, the whiter it becomes. The two daybreaks (al-fajrân), as the scholiast observes on this passage, are al-kâḏib wa-l-ṣâdiḳ—the _lying_ or supposed one, which precedes the true dawn, and the latter itself. The very poet, however, from whom I quote this fragment, at another place exactly inverts the order of colour: representing the white or grey colour as appearing first, and then passing into the reddish or saffron. In a poem to a friend, in which he gives a beautiful description of night, he brings forward Night as in love with the stars. But she grows old—

Thumma shâba-d-duja wa-châfa min al-haj- * ri faġaṭṭa-l-mashîba bi-z-zaʿfarâni.

And Night grew grey, and feared the desertion [of her lover, the starry heaven]: So she dipped her grey hair into saffron.[433]

The idea that the poet intends to express here is, that Night at its latter end becomes grey, when the grey morning begins to appear, and that to preserve the appearance of youth and be still acceptable to her lover she must put on red paint. But even the brightness of the sun by day (ḍiâ al-nahâr) is compared by the same poet to the grey hairs of an old man (II. 226. 2), as is also the brightness of the stars:[434]

Raʾâhâ salîlu ṭ-ṭîni wa-sh-sheybu shâmilun * lahâ bith-thureyyâ wâ-s-simâkeyni wa-l-wazni.[435]

He that was brought out of clay [Adam] saw it [the world], when its hair was all grey, With the Pleiades, the two Fishes and the Balance.

We find the same figure, of which we have seen Abû-l-ʿAlâ to be so fond, used by Abû-l-Ḥasan ʿAlî b. Isḥâḳ al-Waddânî, a Maġreb [North African] poet, who says of the morning: ‘It is like the greyness which spreads itself over the black hair of youth (the black night):’

Dâna-ṣ-ṣabâḥu wa-lâ ata wa-kaʾannahu * sheybun aṭalla ʿala sawâdi shibâbî.[436]

So, inversely, when the hair grows grey it is said ‘The dark night is lighted.’[437]

From all these cases it may be gathered that the progress of the sun from the dawn to the full day is treated sometimes as a transition from a whitish to a reddish colour, sometimes as the reverse. Sometimes the redness of morning begins, and turns into white; sometimes the greyness, which passes into red.[438] But both conceptions are also found combined in a single idea: thus, for instance, al-ʿArjî the poet says:

Bâtâ bi-anʿâmi leylatin ḥatta badâ * subḥun talawwaḥa ka-l-aġarri-l-ashkari. They both passed a joyous night, until began The morning to appear, like a red horse with white forehead-spot (ġurrâ).[439]

Some already-cited examples have enabled us to observe that when day is contrasted with night, it is done by calling the night black and the day white. To the former instances I will now add another for clearness’ sake: ‘Till the whiteness of the day became black’ (ḥatta ʿâda bayâḍ al-nahâr sawâdan, Rom. of ʿAntar, XXV. 5. 4). The attribute _white_, applied to the sun of the advanced day, is especially clear in a passage which I must not omit to mention. The poet al-Mutanabbî says:

Azûruhum wa-sawâdu-l-leyli yashfaʿunî * wa-anthanî wa-bayâḍu-ṣ-ṣubḥi yuġrî bî. I visit them when the _blackness of the night_ aids me; And I retire when the _whiteness of the morning_ drives me away.

A critic[440] remarks on this passage that the writer ought to have spoken of the _day_ rather than of the _whiteness of the morning_, as the rhetorical law of al-muḳâbalâ ‘antithesis’ demands as the opposite to Night not Dawn, but Day. Thus ‘the whiteness of day’ would be better. Another passage with the antithesis is contained in Ḥarîrî: ‘The white day becomes black’ (iswadda-l-yaum al-abyaḍ).[441] This use of language is characteristically exemplified in the expression sirnâ bayâḍa jauminâ wa-sawâda leylatinâ, ‘we travelled night and day’ (literally, ‘we travelled during the whiteness of our day and the blackness of our night,’ Aġânî, II. 74. 20). But apart from any antithesis, the white colour is attributed to the light of the morning and the day: falamma-rtafaʿat al-shams fabyâḍḍat, ‘after the sun had risen high and _become white_,’ is said in a tradition.[442] In the Romance of ʿAntar (XXIV. 111. 3), a horse is thus described: ‘he was white in colour, as if he were the day when it breaks, or the moon[443] when it shines with full beams’ (wa-hua abyaḍ al-laun kaʾannahu al-ṣabâḥ iḏa-nfajar wa-l-ḳamar iḏâ badar).

On Assyrian ground also we discover the idea of the _whiteness_ of the sun, expressed, not indeed by a word directly signifying a colour, but yet by an epithet which is undoubtedly founded upon this idea. In the lyrical poem, called by Schrader ‘The Assyrian Royal Psalm’ (line 29), a land with a _silver sky_,[444] i.e. with a bright shining sunny sky, is desired for the king. So here the bright sunny sky is represented as of silver colour. On the other hand, Ḥomar^m, the name of a Himyarite god,[445] has perhaps a solar meaning, equivalent to the Arabic aḥmar ‘Red;’ at all events, the fancy that he may be a sort of Bacchus (chamr ‘wine’) sounds improbable. In Hebrew literature we find no direct indications of the colours which were associated with the sun: an indirect indication is afforded by the passage in Is. XXIV. 23, where it is said that ‘the sun grows pale and the moon red.’[446] In the Talmûd literature, however, we find an incidental discussion of the colour of the sun; to which one of the Excursus is devoted.[447]

I have paused long on the ideas held of the Sun with reference to colour, longer than is consistent with the symmetry of my book, and have especially brought up many examples from the Arabic language, celebrated for its wealth of synonyms and epithets—all with the object of giving probability to my ideas on the mythical character of Esau or Edom and Laban, Jacob’s two hostile kinsmen. We have seen that the sun is called _white_ quite as frequently as _red_;[448] now is it not certain beyond a doubt that the two foes of Jacob the Night-sky, namely Edom the red and Laban the white, are only names for the Sun, formed by the Hebrew myth on the ground of the sun’s colour? The war of darkness and the stormy sky against the red or white sunny sky is described in the rich language of Mythology, which has devoted such multifarious appellations to this struggle, as a strife of one who follows on the heel of his brother, against the white and the red. Here we will return to a point which was anticipated in the Third Section of this chapter; I mean the fact that the mythic feature which, with other solar characteristics, has fastened itself on the description of David, a perfectly historical person, that he was admônî ‘reddish,’ belongs to the same group of mythic ideas. It is a bit of solar myth: ‘He is red, and of excellent sight and good eyes’ (1 Sam. XVI. 12).

Thus the mythical appellations Jacob, Edom, and Laban appear to be cleared up, and the features belonging to them have discovered to us the nocturnal character of the first-named and the solar of the two latter personages. I have confined myself to the most essential point, the statement of the fact and the identification of the mythic figures in the centre of the story. If we were to use the collateral points also as mythic matter, more abundant results might be attained. But we must limit ourselves to an investigation of the main features, since in the present position of mythological inquiry it would be difficult and dangerous to try to pick out with any confidence from the epic descriptions in the Bible all that belongs to the original myth. It might, for instance, be urged that Jacob is endowed with a _deceitful_ character, since he cheats the one of his blessing and his birthright, and the other of his sheep (Hermes), and this might be treated as characteristic of the _night_, as the figures of the night-sky are credited elsewhere with a thievish nature. ‘Like thieves,’ said the ancient Indian singer, ‘so the nights stole away with their stars, that Sûrya might become visible’ (Rigveda, I. 50. 2).

In a legend of the Palatinate the _King of the Night_ residing at the Ice-sea _stole_ the Sun;[449] Rachel steals the household-gods of her father Laban (Gen. XXXI. 19); and Jacob himself, as the Scripture expresses it, _steals_ the heart of Laban the Aramean, not telling him of his intention to fly (v. 20).

Now wrapt in mantle, like a thief, the Night is seen, She covers o'er her silver-studded raiment’s sheen.

says Arany, in his ‘Gipsies of Nagy-Ida’[450] (Canto I. v. 21).

But what I have hitherto explained is only one side of Jacob’s mythical characteristics: we have seen against whom he fought. But Jacob did not only fight: he loved also, loved with tenderness and self-abnegation. He wooed, he married; and the history of his children takes up a considerable portion of the Book of Genesis. The loves of the Night-sky, the names of his wives whom he gained by conquest, and of the children that came out of his loins, must be an important part of the Myth of the Night-sky; and we should be accomplishing our task very imperfectly if we refused to enter on the consideration of these figures of Hebrew mythology.

§ 12. Let us turn first to his women. He has both wives and so-called concubines. In my opinion this distinction belongs to the original form of the myth; and some explanation of its significancy must be given at the outset. There is another already-discussed name of the night-sky, Abhrâm, with which are associated both a legitimate wife Sârâ, and a concubine Hâgâr; and in the latter we discovered the mythical bearer of a solar name, ‘the Flying one.’ This circumstance leads to the discovery that, whilst the concubines in mythical phraseology are figures of _opposite_ nature to their master, like Hagar a solar figure to Abram the dark sky, the names of the legitimate wives represent figures homogeneous to the nature of the husband. This is the case preeminently with Sarah, Abram’s wife. The name signifies _Princess, Lady_, the Princess of the Heaven, the Moon, the Queen who rules over the great army of the night-sky (ṣebhâ hash-shâmayîm). Another name of the moon in Hebrew mythology is probably Milkâ (the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, Gen. XI. 29), i.e. ‘the Queen’—not expressly _wife_, but grammatically the feminine form of Melekh (Abhî-melekh) ‘King’ (the Sun), like Ashêrâ (Moon) from Âshêr (Sun), or Lebhânâ (Moon) from Lâbhân (Sun). ‘Queen or Princess of Heaven’ is a very frequent name for the Moon.[451] We learn most remarkable facts from the Chaldee-Babylonian series of deities, which, though not old enough to be a myth, must, like every theogony, have sprung from mythology misunderstood. In this system, in which the deities are arranged in male and female triads, so that there is always a male deity parallel to the goddess of the female triad who stands at the same spot, Sîn (the Moon) and Gula of the male triad are balanced respectively by ‘the highest Princess’ and by Malkît ‘the Queen’ in the female; and these are only Sarah and Milcah again. Istar also is described as Princess (sarrat) of heaven;[452] which is probably connected with the fact that this goddess of the Assyrian Pantheon, who is commonly compared to Venus, in later times became a moon-goddess.[453] Sir H. Rawlinson says that Μισσαρή in Damascius may be cognate with the Assyrian Sheruha or Sheruya, the wife of Asshûr, and signify ‘the Queen.’[454] And as it is the _stars_ over which the Queen of the night-sky bears sway, she is _siderum regina_ in Horace (_Carmen saeculare_, v. 35).[455] Even in the latest times the Hebrews called the moon the ‘Queen of Heaven’ (mele-kheth hash-shâmayîm, Jer. VII. 18), and paid her divine honours in this character at the time of the Captivity. The Hebrew women who had migrated to Egypt answered the Prophet who warned them: ‘As to the word that thou has spoken unto us in the name of Jahveh, we do not listen to thee; for we shall certainly do all the things that have gone forth from our own mouth; burning incense to the _Queen of Heaven_, and pouring libations to her as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and princes, in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and were filled with food and were happy and saw no evil; whereas ever since we have ceased to burn incense to the _Queen of Heaven_ and pour libations to her, we have wanted everything, and been consumed by sword and famine. And when we were burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring libations to her, was it _without our men_ that we made cakes for her, to receive her image, and poured libations to her?’ (Jer. XLIV. 16–19). This reply leads us to infer that the moon-worship in Judah was specially attractive to the women and allowed by the men, and was not a mere secondary religious act, but a prominent worship of the first rank; yet a worship which, considering the prevailingly solar character of the religion of an agricultural people, was then kept up chiefly by the women as the relic of an ancient nomadic age. What was the antiquity of this lunar worship among the Hebrews, is testified (as has long been known) by the part played by Mount Sinai in the history of Hebrew religion. For this geographical name is doubtless related to _Sin_, one of the Semitic names of the moon. The mountain must in ancient times have been consecrated to the Moon.[456] The beginning of the Hebrew religion, which, as we shall see, was connected with the phenomena of the night-sky, germinated first during the residence in Egypt on the foundation of an ancient myth. The recollection of this occasioned them to call the part of Egypt which they had long inhabited ereṣ Sînîm ‘Moonland’ (Is. XLIX. 12). Obviously the lunar worship of Nomads stands in connexion with the prominent position occupied by the figures of the night-sky in their mythology. When, through that psychological process which results in the decay of the life of the myth and the rise of a religious view of the world, the mythic elements become religion, then the Moon is not believed to possess those deleterious qualities of which the later legends of the American nations are full, but is rather regarded as the source of blessing and success. The Hebrews called the most fruitful place in their new country, the ‘City of the Palms,’ formerly delightful, though now a very cheerless hole, by a name denoting _Moon-city_—Yerêchô (Jericho). An analogous system of nomenclature is mentioned by Ḥamzâ of Iṣpahân, a Persian who wrote in Arabic, who says in his _Kitâb al-muwâzanâ_ that, because the moon is the cause of an abundant supply of water and of rain, the names of the most fruitful places in Persia are compounded with the word _mâh_ ‘moon:’ e.g. Mâhidînâr, Mâhishereryârân, Mâhikârân, Mâhiharûm &c.[457] For, in the opinion of the Iranians the growth of plants depends on the influence of the moon.[458] The Arabic language still shows clearly the mythical connexion between the moon and good pasture,[459] in the fact that the same word, which as a noun, al-ḳamar, signifies moon, as a verb, ḳamara, expresses the notion _multus fuit_ (de aqua et pabulo), and ḳamir means _multa_ aqua.

The nomadic Hebrews called Sarah, the Princess of Heaven,[460] i.e. of the night-sky, Abram’s legitimate wife. The same relation between wife and concubine comes out with still greater distinctness in the case of Jacob, Abram’s synonym. His legitimate wives are Leah and Rachel; to the latter he is bound by the tenderest love—a love which in the view of the Biblical writer became the ideal of self-sacrificing conjugal affection. Both their names are homogeneous to Jacob’s mythical character, and the bearers of these mythical appellations are figures of the dark sky of night and clouds. It will be regarded by serious investigators as no mere chance that the word Lêʾâ in its origin signifies the same as Delîlâ, namely, _languida, defatigata_, the _Languishing, Weary, Weak_—the setting Sun that has finished its day’s work, or rather the time when there is no longer any sun, but the Night, who cuts off from her long-haired lover or bridegroom the locks (_crines Phoebi_) in which his whole force resides; the Night, which robs the Sun of his splendid rays, and causes him to fall powerless to the ground and lie blind on the battle-field. Even in a product of the Jewish literature of a later age the expression châlâsh ‘weak, debilitated’ is used of the setting sun. ‘He is like a hero who goes forth strong and returns home powerless; thus the sun at his rising is a mighty hero, and at his setting a _weakling_.’[461] Nothing similar is connected with the name Lêʾâ; yet it is clear that this name is an appellation of the setting sun or the advancing night, when we read: weʿênê Lêʾâ rakkôth ‘the eyes of Leah were weak’ (Gen. XXIX. 17).[462] How closely the ideas ‘End’ (here that of the day) and ‘Weariness’ hang together in Semitic, we see clearly in the Aramaic word shilhâ, shilhê ‘end,’ which is developed out of the Shaphʿêl form of the root lehî (the Hebrew lâʾâ, whence the name Lêʾâ), which denotes ‘to be wearied.’[463] The name Râchêl is still clearer and less ambiguous. It signifies ‘Sheep.’ When the ancients raised their eyes to heaven and saw grey clouds slowly driving over the celestial fields, they discovered there the same as our children see when in their innocent imaginations they find figures of hills and animals in the sky. Men who form myths stand in this respect on the same intellectual stage as our children. How finely has Angelo de Gubernatis, in the introduction to his most original work ‘Zoological Mythology,’ attached his profound explanations of the old animal-mythology, which are based upon a sympathetic poetical feeling after the sentiments of a mythic age, to vivid memories of that early age in which the enquirer after myths himself looked up to heaven and _made_ myths! Moreover, what the primitive humanity that created myths and the children of our advanced modern age read in the picture-book of nature,[464] is still found there by people who, although they no longer make myths, yet excel us in immediate observation of nature. The sandhills and downs of the Sahara are variously called by the natives kelb ‘Dog,’ kebsh ‘Ram,’ or chashm el-kelb or chashm el-kebsh ‘Dog’s nose’ or ‘Ram’s nose.’[465] But it is chiefly the clouds that gave so much food to fancy. On Arabic ground we can refer to a treatise by Abû Bekr ibn Dureyd, a linguist of an early age known to every Arabist, on the ‘Description of the Rain and the Cloud,’ which the learned Professor William Wright has published in a useful collection. In this treatise many a vivid picture is to be found which exhibits the continual working of the old mythic views.[466] Even a modern literature nearer to us may be quoted; for who knows not the classical passage in Shakespeare, where Polonius makes observations on the forms of the clouds—a series of mythical observations, which the same poet allows another of his heroes to condense into a mythological _résumé_:

Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon ’t, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air. _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV. 14.

If the sky is a pasture, it is most natural to see in the clouds beasts feeding there. So the nomad Arab sees in the clouds herds of camels,[467] and calls a small herd of twenty or thirty camels by the same name by which he describes a broken-off fragment of cloud—al-ṣirmâ. The poet Abû Ḥibâl calls a rain-cloud dalûḥ, i.e. ‘a heavily laden camel;’[468] and according to the Arabian philologist al-Tebrîzî a cloud accompanied by thunder and lightning is called al-ḥannânâ ‘the bellowing,’ because the ancient Arabs compared a thundering cloud[469] to a camel that breaks out into loud bellowing from painful desire to reach home.[470] How full of meaning is the myth that lies hidden behind this expression ḥannânâ! The camel on a journey has gone far away from home, longs to be back again, and bellows with terrible pain: it is the Thunder.[471] And this myth was not confined to the Arabs; we find a slight trace of it among the later Jews, in the Talmûd. When it thundered, they said, ‘The clouds groan.’ Achâ b. Jaʿaḳôbh describes meteorological phenomena in the following words: ‘The lightning sparkles, _the clouds groan_ (menahamîn ʿanânê), and the rain comes’ (Berâkhôth, fol. 59. a). This mythical conception is only a variation of the more general view that thunder is a _lion’s roaring_ (Job XXXVII. 4; shâʾag is used specially of the lion), out of which grew the roaring of Jahveh, mentioned in many passages of prophecy and poetry—a result of the monotheistic transformation of mythical ideas. In Arabic hamhama is used both of the lion’s roaring and of thunder; and so also zamjara. In the work of Ibn Dureyd already quoted an Arab says of a thunder-cloud, ‘Its thunders groan like camels longing to get home (ṭirâb), and roar like raging lions.’[472]

The Arab saw in the clouds a herd of camels, in a single cloud a single camel.[473] The ostrich, which is a favourite term of comparison in Arabic poetry, is also seen by them in the clouds. Zuheyr b. ʿUrwâ says of a little cloud visible behind a larger one, that it was an ostrich hung up by the feet (kaʾanna-r-rabâba duweyna-s-saḥâbi * naʿâmun tuʿallaḳu bi-l-arjuli).[474] From the Hebrew mythology we have the similar conception of the cloud as a _sheep_, as Râchêl. She is the legitimate wife of the dark, nocturnal or overclouded sky. When the cloud let fall its wet burden in drizzling rain upon the earth, the primitive Hebrews said ‘Rachel is weeping for her children’—a phrase preserved from an age of mythic ideas, which was retained to a late age in a very different sense.[475] For as the Arab regarded the thunder as the cloud’s cry of pain, so the Hebrew could see in the rain Rachel’s tears. Even up to the present day the Arabs say of the rain: ‘The sky weeps, the clouds weep;’[476] and the idea was not strange to the Greek, who spoke of the ‘Tears of Zeus.’[477] In the Romance of ʿAntar, XXV. 58. 4, it is said of the rain:

The gloomy heaven weeps with tears, that stream in constant flow Out from the eye of a rainful cloud.

The poet Ibn Muṭeyr says most beautifully of the weeping sky: ‘The cloud smiles at the lighting up (of the lightning), and weeps from the corners of her eyes, the moisture of which is not excited by splinters (sticking in the eye); and without either joy or grief she combines laughing and weeping.’[478] Rachel has a favourite son called Yôsêph (Joseph). This name signifies: ‘He multiplies,’ or, from the explanation already given, ‘The Multiplier.’ He is called in a hymn addressed to him, ‘The blessing of the heaven above, the blessing of the flood that lies below, the blessing of the (female) breasts and of the womb’ (Gen. XLIX. 25). Can we doubt that this is the Rain, which multiplies—the blessing from above, which lies below in floods of water, the rain which mythologically was so often regarded as the nutritive milk of the milked cows of the clouds?[479] And probably the old Arabic idol called Zâʾidatu,[480] i.e. ‘the Multiplieress,’ has the same mythological signification as the synonymous term Joseph in Hebrew, and may therefore be regarded as a goddess of Rain. Can the least doubt be felt, that ‘the Multiplier,’ the son of the cloud, must be the rain, as wine is called the daughter of the grape,[481] and the fruit the son of the tree,[482] and as bread is called in Arabic jâbiru-bnu ḥabbata, like ‘Strengthener, son of Mrs. Grain?’[483] Moreover, while these latter views are natural, but not spread abroad everywhere, the idea that the rain is the child of the cloud is universal. We meet it among the Greeks, for Pindar sings:

... ἕστιν δ’ οὐρανίων ὑδάτων ὀμβρίων, _παίδων Νεφέλας_ (Olymp. XI. 2, 3),—

just like the Arabs. The poet Moḥammed b. ʿAbd al-Malik said, when a violent shower of rain delayed the arrival of his friend al-Ḥasan b. Wahab, ‘I know not how to express my complaint against one heaven which keeps back from me another heaven (the friend), unless indeed I utter curse and blessing together: Let _the former become childless_, and the latter live long.’[484] The cloudy heaven was to lose his children—i.e. the rain was to cease.

Lastu adrî mâ ḏâ aḳûlu wa-ashkû * min samâʾin taʿûḳunî ʿan samâʾï Ġayra annî adʿû ʿala tilka bi-th-thuk- * lî wa-adʿû lihâḏihi bi-l-baḳâʾi.

It is this ‘Multiplier, Son of the Cloud,’ alone who can bring aid when the earth is visited by long drought and famine. The _multiplying_ Rain gives back to the parched earth her fertility and procures nourishment for starving mankind. This simple idea is formed from the mythic base into the story of the famine in Egypt and Joseph’s aid in allaying it. The myth itself, while it lived, was general, not bound by time or place, limited neither geographically or chronologically. When no longer understood and when lost to human consciousness, it became a locally defined legend, belonging to a certain historical period. This is the same experience which meets us in most of the myths of Hellenic Heroes. The Sun, which daily assails with an iron club and slays the monsters of darkness and the storms, when personified as Herakles does his deeds in a small place in Hellas, Nemea or Lerna. While Joseph imparts fertility to the parched earth, and in his character of ‘Multiplier’ delivers it from the curse which rested on it, the prophetic hero, in whom we have already detected some solar features, does the opposite. Elijah, who ascends to heaven on a fiery chariot with a fiery horse, the ‘hairy man,’ curses the soil of the Hebrew land in the time of Ahab (again a localising and chronological limitation of what the myth had told in general terms without such limitation) with drought, want of rain, and unfruitfulness; he is the cause of a fearful famine (1 Kings XVII. 1).

The ‘Multiplier’ has also severe contests to sustain. The most celebrated of them is that which he maintains against her who loves him dearly, whose name is preserved to us only in legendary tradition—Zalîchâ, the ‘Swift-marching.’[485] We know her already. He flies from the temptress, but _leaves his cloak in her hand_ (Gen. XXXIX. 12). This feature, which seems to us only accessory, may have been an important element of the original myth. We shall see further on, that the figures of the night-sky or the dark sky generally are provided with a covering or cloak, with which they cover over the earth or the sun, and thus produce darkness. It is a different battle that he fights against his brothers, the ‘Possessors of arrows,’ i.e. the sun-rays, which shoot at the rain-cloud and try to drive it off. Joseph’s persecution by his own brothers and expulsion to Egypt is only the other side of the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Typhon and the Phenician myth of Adonis; the solar hero being in the latter cases, and the rain-hero in the former case, the object of persecution. While the sarcophagus of Osiris starts from Egypt on its travels, and lands at Byblos on the Phenician coast, Joseph when sold goes in the opposite direction from Canaan to Egypt. Both these myths became local legends, one in Egypt, the other in Canaan; consequently the direction of the wandering is modified in conformity with the locality.

From the battle of the rainy sky against the solar heroes with their arrows our myth makes the Rainbow to arise: just as the lightning was called ‘the Arrow of God,’ so the rainbow was in later times described as the ‘Bow of God’ (ḳashtî, Gen. IX. 13). The later legend of civilisation gives to the rainbow a foundation which is quite foreign to mythology. In mythology the rainbow appears to be attributed to Joseph, who, when overcome and driven off the field by the ‘Possessors of arrows,’ is after all not totally defeated, for ‘his bow abode in strength’ (Gen. XLIX. 24). This expression indicates the following conception. When the rain-cloud was driven from its place by the solar heroes, he fixed his bow in the sky, to be ready for a future fight. Thus in the Hebrew myth the rainbow is a bow belonging to the hero of storms. We find the same idea in the Arabic mythology. Besides other names, the rainbow bears that of ḳausu Ḳuzaḥa, ‘the bow of Ḳuzaḥ’ (who has been proved to be a storm-hero); and it may be gathered from some passages which Tuch has incidentally brought together in his Treatise on Sinaitic Inscriptions,[486] that Ḳuzaḥ shoots his arrows of lightning during the storms from this same bow, which after the conclusion of the battle appears in the sky. In the same Hebrew hymn which contains the above mention of the Bow, ebhen Yisrâʾêl ‘the Stone of Israel’ is named. Perhaps I am not at fault in conjecturing that the Stone here has a solar signification, and is used of the Sun which after the victory over Joseph appears on the firmament. We know from Schwartz’s[487] demonstrations, which Kuhn has recently confirmed in his academical treatise on the stages of development in the formation of Myths, that in mythical language the sun and other luminous bodies are called ‘stones.’ To the same mythic cycle belongs the circumstance that David slays his giant-foe by casting stones. And tradition[488] says that Cain killed Abel by throwing stones. But on the whole we find in the above-quoted hymn (called Jacob’s) only slight hints that can be claimed for the mythic period; for the remains of primeval hymns like that fragment were in later times so overgrown with matter derived from historical circumstances, that we must be content if we can discover what were the points of view and conceptions chiefly represented by these fragments. The reason why it is so difficult to reconstruct the old mythic view of the Hebrews concerning the Rainbow, obviously lies in the fact that it was supplanted by a later theological explanation (Gen. IX. 12–17). It is curious that the reason assigned in this later passage for the origin of the Rainbow was not able to obtain general credence, and that even Christian popular legends frequently appear to flow from ancient mythic conceptions. I will only mention an instance given by Bernhard Schmidt—the Christians in Zante call the rainbow 'the girdle, or the bow of the Virgin, τὸ ζώναρι, τὸ τόξο τῆς παναγίας.[489]

§ 13. Now while Jacob’s lawful wives are mythical figures homogeneous to himself, as we have seen, his collateral wives, the two concubines Zilpah and Bilhah represent figures of the ancient myth standing in a position of opposition to Jacob. The mythical character of Zilpah has been already determined, in the Seventh Section of this chapter. For this determination we had no other resource but the etymology of the name, no mythical matter having been preserved concerning this mythical figure. The case is reversed when we enquire into the meaning of Bilhah. The resource of etymology abandons us here; for, even if we assume that the abstract idea represented by the name must here be understood in a participial sense (Bilhâ=‘the Trembling, Terrified’), yet, in the want of analogous cases, the signification of the name brings us to no track worth pursuing. But, on the other hand, we fortunately have a material myth (as opposed to a mere name), relating to Bilhah: ‘Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine’ (Gen. XXXV. 22).

The transition from one aspect of nature to another is not always regarded by the myth from the point of view of a battle, in which the vanishing aspect is represented by the conquered and the approaching one by the conqueror. The myth speaks equally frequently of love and union, i.e. of sexual connexion. The vanishing aspect disappears in that which immediately follows: they become one, as man and wife. In the myths of sexual union, the mythical feature that the two figures one of which follows the other are brother and sister, father and daughter, or mother and son, is sometimes disregarded. We had an example of this in the Hebrew myth of the union of Shechem with Dinah. This is very frequent in Aryan mythology; and it is sufficient to refer to the part of Max Müller’s essay which deals with this subject.[490] There is a very fine myth of this kind, preserved in a work ascribed to Plutarch, _De fluviorum et montium nominibus_ (IV. 3). It is there said with reference to the Ganges, ‘Near it is situated the mountain _Anatole_, or the Rising,’ so called for the following reason: ‘Helios saw the maiden Anaxibia dancing there, and was seized with violent love for her. No longer able to control his passion, he pursued her with desire to force her to yield to his desire. The maiden, surrounded on every side, escaped into the temple of Artemis Orthia on the mountain Koryphe, and was lost to the eyes of her pursuer. He, following after, and unable to overtake his beloved, went up to the same mountain grieving. Therefore the natives call the mountain Anatole or ‘Sun-uprising,’ as Kaemarus narrates in the tenth book of his ‘Indian Affairs.’[491] Here, where the sunrise is not even the result of a union, but very characteristically that of disappointed love, Helios is no relative whatever of the Dawn, any more than Shechem of Dinah, or Abimelech, the later Sun-god (Melekh, compare Abhîbaʿal and Baʿal), of Rebekah, whom he loves (Gen. XXVI), or of Sarah, ‘Moon,’ whom he takes to himself (Gen. XX). However, the view which we shall encounter in the myth of Lot, that the lovers or united couples are blood-relations, brother and sister, or parent and child, is more prevalent. The idea of a son in love with his mother is quite general in Asiatic mythology, as Lenormant proves: in the old Babylonian mythology Dâzî, the Hebrew Tammûz, is lover of his mother Istar, &c.;[492] among the Egyptians Amôn is called the husband of his mother Neith; and among the Hindus Pûshan is described as both his sister’s lover and his mother’s husband. When after long darkness a mysterious Twilight slowly advanced, followed by the Dawn with ever-increasing rapidity, the Aryan said, ‘Prajâpati loves his own daughter Ushas and forces her,’ or ‘Indra seduces Ahalyâ the Night,’ or forms a union with his mother Dahanâ.[493] To the same class Sarah also seems to belong, as she is not only wife but also sister of Abram. Reuben marries Bilhah, his mother, or more correctly his father’s wife. Reuben is a figure homogeneous to Jacob, and therefore belongs to the night, as we discover most certainly from the circumstance that in the battle of the ‘Possessors of arrows’ against Joseph he is on the side of the latter and tries to save him, while Judah, a solar man, proposes to sell Joseph (Gen. XXXVII. 21, 26). In a myth such sympathy indicates that the subject and object of it are at all events not hostile figures: we have already seen this in the relations between Isaac and Esau and between Rebekah and Jacob. However, Reuben here seems not to be the night in general, but the twilight which forms the beginning and the end of the night, if we attach weight to the fact that Reuben is Jacob’s son. Though unimportant and not even necessary for the appreciation of the myth, this is very probable. The Sun is the mother of the Twilight, for the twilight proceeds from the sun. So when at the end of the night the morning-darkness gives way to the sun or dawn and disappears in them, Reuben and Bilhah are united. Whatever part the twilight may play here, it is at least clear that this myth speaks of the union of Night with its mother Day: when Night gives place to Day, from whose womb it was born but yesterday, then the myth says ‘Reuben is marrying his mother.’

§ 14. But before we continue the chapter on love and sexual union, the materials of which are mainly drawn from the history of Jacob’s family, it is desirable to insert some remarks on the mythological significance of that family. Our mythological observation leads to the following result. From its first commencement the myth speaks of _twelve children_ of Jacob, i.e. of the dark night-sky. These children, on whose names the myth lays no stress, can hardly be anything else than the shining troop which has its home in the night-sky—the Moon and the Eleven Stars (comp. Gen. XXXVII. 9, achad ʿâsâr kôkhâbhîm). These are Jacob’s children, though in a different sense from that in which Isaac is the son of Abraham, or Joseph the son of Rachel. In these latter instances the conception of a parental and filial relation was the result of the impression produced upon the creators of myths by constant succession; in the case of Jacob’s sons it is only meant that the eleven stars and the moon together form the Family of the Night-sky. This conception having once been grasped, there was nothing to hinder creators of myths from speaking of a son of Jacob who did not belong to that Family. And if there were a myth which said that Jacob fought with his son, as is said of Abraham, then we could not seek such a son in the family of stars which fills Jacob’s house. It is a general rule which must never be lost out of sight in the investigation of myths, that mythology does not present a _system_, whose separate elements are comprehensive results, or abstractions from _continuous_ observation of nature. What is told in the myth expresses how each _single_ observation affects the mind of man. Hence the various modes in which the myth speaks of a phenomenon; viewing it from various positions, it constantly changes the names, and recognises different relations. Whoever finds contradictions in all this must not turn against the interpreter and reconstructor of the myth, but against the mind of man itself which created myths: his dispute lies with the latter, not with the method of mythological science.

Jacob’s twelve sons, who are mentioned by name in the document in Genesis, can hardly have had their separate existence acknowledged at so early an age as that of the myth which comprised them under the general name of the twelve sons of the starry sky. Fathers of tribes with twelve or thirteen children (even in the numeration of Jacob’s children this uncertainty of number occurs) are frequently met with in Biblical genealogies, e.g. Joktan, Nahor, and Ishmael. The same tendency towards the number twelve is encountered in genealogies in other parts of the world. In the Ojibwa legend Getube has twelve children, of whom the eldest is called Mujekewis, and the youngest, who obtains great power and successfully repels the evil spirits, Wa-jeeg-e-wa-kon-ay.[494] At a later time, when a harmonising of the legendary matter, not from a set purpose, but from the acknowledged tendency of the human mind to bridge over contradictions, was going on, then a desire was felt to know the names of the twelve sons. When mythic consciousness and the stage when the mind was self-impelled to mythic conception were long passed, and the real meaning of names connected by mythology with certain deeds was no longer known, twelve such names, most of which had no longer any meaning, were taken at random and called Jacob’s twelve sons. Thus were obtained twelve names to answer the general proposition, ‘The Twelve form the Family of Jacob.’ Among these names there are true sons of Jacob, i.e. some who are declared by the myth itself to be so: here the genealogical narrator employed data derived from the myth. Next, there are some among them whom the myth treats not as sons of Jacob but as sons of his wives. For we must not forget that when Joseph is said to be son of Rachel, the myth does not trouble itself to ask who the father was. The conception that ‘the Rain is the son of the Cloud,’ which is expounded in the mythic description of Joseph’s birth, is not the result of any consideration of the names of the two parents who gave life to him; but the myth-former, seeing the cloud heavy with rain and observing the rain dripping from its lap, combined these two impressions and said, ‘The Cloud has borne the Rain.’ The later genealogical story could then easily find a father for the children of Zilpah, Rachel and others, in him whom the myth introduces as husband of those female figures.

Other Hebrew tribes have names totally free from any mythical character, and ethnographical (Judah) or geographical in nature. The last especially must of course have originated after the conquest of Canaan, since they are connected with geographical peculiarities of that land. One of these is Ephraim, whose name we shall see in the Fourth Section of the Eighth Chapter to be derived from the name of the town Ephrathah; another is Benjamin. The name Bin-yâmîn is associated with the division of the land, and signifies _Son of the right side_. The tribe was probably so called by the leading tribe of Judah, on whose right side Benjamin was his next neighbour.[495] Yet myths have attached themselves even to these geographical and ethnographical names, as they have to many historical ones. Concerning some no mythical features have been preserved, which is most to be regretted in the case of Gad. This name occurs in a later age with a religious signification (Is. LXV. 11), and would doubtless yield much instruction if a fuller myth gave us insight into its original meaning and connexion. Gad is commonly held to be the so-called Star of Fortune (Jupiter); but it is difficult to determine whether Gad’s sons, when they were called his sons, were put into connexion with the Star. If they were, we should have a case analogous to the Arabic appellation ‘Daughters of the star al-Ṭâriḳ’ (see above, p. 57). As some Arabian tribes call themselves ‘Sons of the Rain’ (benû mâ al-samâ), &c. so the Hebrew tribes, at the time when the myth still lived in the understanding of all, took names from the mythical figures, one calling itself ‘Sons of the Longhaired,’ another ‘Sons of the Multiplier’ &c. I think I cannot be wrong in assuming this nomenclature of the tribes to be older than the assignation of names to each of Jacob’s twelve sons. When the names of tribes had long been in existence, they were brought forward to serve as names for Jacob’s sons; and thus they laid the foundation of the genealogical tradition which traces the people of Israel to its first father Jacob, and thence goes back to his father and to Abraham.[496] But the mythical matter transmitted to us concerning the twelve who are introduced as the sons of Jacob, independently of what we have already discussed, is very little. Some names resist any reasonable etymology, or at least any etymology consonant with the character of mythical appellations. Still, even from these scanty materials we can pick out some single points that seem worthy of preservation as relics of the old Hebrew mythology. If the investigation of this subject is to be successfully pushed further than I can pretend to do in this treatise, the accurate enquirer will have especially to adduce the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, known as ‘Jacob’s Blessing,’ from which I have already borrowed materials. In this ancient piece I am convinced that many fragments of _hymns_ are contained which originally had for their subject those mythical figures to which in their present form as _blessings_ they refer. We have in this fragment a sort of Hebrew Veda before our eyes.

Those figures among Jacob’s sons, of whom I venture to treat,[497] so far as there are means available have a solar character, with the exception of those which we have already recognised to be figures of the sky of night and clouds, and of one other figure (Levi) in which we shall discover something antagonistic to solarism. Zebhûlûn was seen even by Gesenius to mean the _Round_, _Globular_. Though we cannot find any analogous expression as a name for the sun, it must be acknowledged to be a very natural one. I believe that Zebhûlûn designates the sun at the end of its course when its red ball appears on the horizon of the sea. Anyone who has had the opportunity of admiring a sunset at the sea-side, will understand why people living there should call the setting sun _globular_; for its true globular form is especially perceptible and striking in such localities. That the name Zebhûlûn owes its origin to such considerations is evident from the language of the Hymn to Zebulun: ‘he rests at the edge of the sea’ (lechôph yammîm yishkôn, Gen. XLIX. 13); and this verse (especially in yishkôn) further confirms what was said on p. 116. Naphtâlî (from the root _ptl_, ‘to twine, twist,’ whence pâthîl ‘thread’), is ‘he of the plaited locks of hair.’ The Hymn calls him ‘a hind let loose’ (ayyâlâ shelûchâ, ver. 21), which is decisive for the solar meaning of Naphtâlî with the locks of hair. For the Semites call the Dawn a _hind_—the Hebrews ayyeleth hash-shachar ‘the Hind of the Dawn’ (Ps. XXII. 1), the Arabs al-ġazâlâ.[498] Even the Talmûd seeks and finds the reason for the identification of the Dawn with a Hind;[499] and another ancient Jewish-Arabic philologist, Moses ben Ezra, in his book on Poetry, also recognised the connexion of this appellation in Hebrew and in Arabic.[500] Accordingly, we must think of a solar interpretation when we read that among the furniture of the ancient Kaʿbâ at Mekka, besides various idols, there were _golden Gazelles_, which were carried off and buried by the Jurhumites, but found again by ʿAbd-al-Muṭṭalib in the well Zemzem.[501] The mythical description of the rising sun as a hind or gazelle is explained by the animal’s horns; for the myth which regards the Sun’s rays sometimes as arrows, sometimes as locks of hair, also treats them sometimes as horns. For this reason the Hebrew language has only one word to denote ‘horn’ and ‘ray of light,’ viz., ḳeren; and for the same reason Moses, who received many features of the solar myth, as Steinthal has pertinently proved in his treatise on the Story of Prometheus,[502] was imagined provided with horns, i.e., with beaming countenance (Ex. XXXIV. 29, 30, 35), a symbol which sacred art has preserved only too faithfully. In the Edda the point of the horn of Heimdall (the sun) is fixed in Niflheim (abode of cloud), i.e. the rays of the sun come forth out of darkness. The glyptic representation of the Assyrian god Bêl in the Louvre is adorned with a tiara surrounded by a row of ox-horns. In the Accadian mythology the name of the goddess Ninka-si, ‘the Lady of the horned face,’ as Lenormant translates it, has undoubtedly a solar character.[503] The same is the case with the Egyptian Isis: Τὸ γὰρ τῆς Ἴσιος ἄγαλμα ἐὸν γυναικήϊον βούκερων ἐστι κατάπερ Ἕλληνες τὴν Ἰοῦν γράφουσι, says Herodotus (II. 41). Lucian, the frivolous scoffer at everything religious, expresses his surprise to Zeus why he is represented with ram’s horns;[504] to which he makes Zeus reply by referring to a mystery into which the uninitiated cannot penetrate.[505] In a word, Naphtali of the long locks, Naphtali the swift hind, is certainly identical with the ‘Hind of the Dawn.’

Whether the name Yehûdâ (Judah) belongs to mythology, or was an early ethnical name before tradition introduced it as that of a Patriarch, is difficult to determine. If the name Yehûdâ could be referred to an etymon which exhibited a solar signification, we should decide for the former alternative, on account of the solar characteristics which are attached to the name. The most plausible etymological explanation would be ‘the Splendid,’ or (on account of the feminine termination â, added to the passive participle with an abstract force) ‘Splendour.’ But if the second alternative be correct, and the name Yehûdâ had from the first only an ethnographical force, then, as in the case of other names not belonging to primeval myths, we must suppose that the solar myths, in company with which we find these historical names, were attached to them in later times.

It is a true solar legend[506] that Judah forms a sexual connexion with Tamar. The latter name denotes ‘Fruit;’ and the myth of her union with Judah expresses the fact that the autumn-sun pours its rays over the fruits of the trees and fields. Thus the Hebrew agriculturist may have said at harvest-time, when the hot rays of the sun rapidly ripened the fruits: and he may at such a time, especially with reference to the vintage, have addressed to the autumn sun ‘Yehûdâ’ the hymn which is contained in the so-called _Jacob’s Blessing_ for Judah (Gen. XLIX. 11–13):

He binds to the vine his foal, To the wine-tree his ass’s young one. He washes in wine his clothes, And in blood of the vine his covering. _Reddish is his eye from wine,_ _And white his teeth from milk._

This is a truly mythic picture of the Sun, pairing at vintage-time with the Vine. The red eyes and white teeth need no further discussion after what has been said in § 11 of this chapter. But a few words are needed in explanation of what is said of the ass and foal. It is sufficient to point to the fact that the reddish-brown ass is one of the animals used in the old mythology to designate the sun.[507] The point of resemblance must be sought in the _reddish_ colour; and hence in the Semitic languages the ass is called the _Red_ (Hebrew chamôr, ‘ass’; Arabic aḥmar, ‘red’).[508] It is probably in consequence of the solar significance of the ass, that Shechem’s father is named ‘the Ass’ (Hamor; and in Arabic ‘Ass’ is a very frequent personal name),[509] and Issachar is described as a bony ass. Therefore to say, as is said in our hymn, that the foal and the colt are bound to the vine is equivalent to saying that ‘the Sun forms a connexion with the Vine;’ it is only a different view of the myth of the connexion of Judah with Tamar. This connexion of the Sun and the Fruit, which is the fundamental thought of the myth of Judah and Tamar, was developed with the aid of other elements into the later form found in the story in Gen. XXXVIII. The same myth was also attached to figures of the historical age in the legend of Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam. XIII. 1–20). David’s son Amnon loves his sister Tamar; and keeping her near him to wait upon him under the pretence of being ill, takes the opportunity to ravish her. Here the myth of the love of the Sun for the Fruit has been transferred to Amnon, a perfect unmythical personage. But Tamar is here quite the same as the personage whose connexion with Judah is described in Genesis; although in the legend of Amnon and Tamar it is Amnon who pursues Tamar, whereas in that of Judah and Tamar the intriguer and seducer is Tamar. When people in ancient times perceived the fruit of the tree gradually change its colour till the autumn-sun shone on it, after which it fell down ripe, they saw in this a love-affair between the Sun and Fruit, which ended with their union. We have here, therefore, to do with that phrase of mythology in which men, as agriculturists, but still standing on the myth-creating stage of intellectual life, speak of vegetation and its causes in terms which later, at the religious stage, will give rise to dualistic religious ideas. Different from the Iranian religious dualism, which sets up two mutually hostile powers, this dualism will put side by side two factors of the course of vegetation (see above, p. 15). This kind of dualism is met with very frequently in the Semitic—especially North and Middle Semitic—religions. Indeed, were we to investigate closely the legends and love-stories which fill the history of the Arabic nation and tribes before Islâm, we should probably discover mythological matter turned into history, which would possess great similarity with the legend of Judah and Tamar. We will select here one only of these stories, which has preserved transparently enough its mythical character. On the mountains Ṣafâ and Marwâ, which still play a part in the pilgrimage to Mekka, there formerly stood two idols named Isâf and Nâʾilâ, who were said to have been two persons of Jurhum who having committed improprieties in the Kaʿbâ were turned into stone in punishment for desecration of the holy place[510]—which, be it incidentally observed, is no rare offence in modern times. It need scarcely be observed that this conformation of the story is due to a distinct Mohammedan tendency imparted to it, and that the interpreter of the myth has to regard only the germ of the story—the sexual union of Nâʾilâ with Isâf. Now the mere translation of these words give us to understand the meaning of the myth. Isâf means _solum sterile, unfruitful ground_, and Nâʾilâ, _she who presents_ (a _nomen agentis_ from nâla ‘to present’). No deep acquaintance with Arabic literature is necessary to convince one that the latter name may be simply an epithet of the Rain, which the Arabs can as readily call the Giver as they compare a liberal giver with the rain (compare geshem nedâbhôth, Ps. LXVIII. 10 [9]). Thus the liberal Rain unites with the unfruitful Ground and encourages vegetation. Out of this, as out of most unions of this sort, sexual licence was evolved at a later time.

The names of Judah’s sons, Perez and Zerah,[511] are solar: the latter denoting ‘the Shining one,’ who comes into the world with a red thread on his hand, and the former ‘he who breaks forth.’ This name is founded on the same idea as is present in the German _Tagesanbruch_,[512] the Hungarian _Hajnalhasadás_, i.e. ‘the breaking through of the dawn’[513] (exactly the same as Perez), the Arabic, fajar (especially infajar al-ṣubḥ or infajar al-fataḳ ‘erupit aurora’).[514] The dawn breaks through, or rather tears asunder, the veil of darkness and breaks forth out of it.

After this survey of the solar figures found among Jacob’s sons, we will conclude this section with the consideration of another mythical name belonging to the class of designations of Jacob’s sons which is connected with the dark sky of clouds and night. This is _Levi_. If we contemplate this name unbiassed by the etymological explanation of it given in the Bible (from lâvâ ‘to cleave to’), I think we shall not be inclined to doubt that Lêvî bears the same relation to the serpent’s name livyâthân, as another serpent’s name nâchâsh bears to the enlarged form nechushtân, which is given as the name of the brazen serpent broken in pieces by King Hezekiah (2 Kings XVIII. 4). The name certainly does not denote ‘brazen;’ for an image is more naturally named from the object it represents than from the matter of which it is made. And the form livyâthân necessarily presupposes a simpler form, from which it could be derived by the addition of the termination âthân (or only ân, if we suppose the original word to have passed through the feminine form livyat), as nechushtân necessitates the preexistence of the simpler nâchâsh. If we have in English a word _earthly_, then, even if no word _earth_ actually existed at the time in the language, we could with perfect justice assert _a priori_ that the word _earth_ must have once existed, in order to make the formation of _earthly_ possible. Similarly the existence of the form livyâthân justifies the assumption of a simple noun-form, as the basis of that derivative enlarged by suffixes.

Now fortunately this simple form is preserved to us in the name Lêvî, and we may therefore unhesitatingly affirm that Levi means ‘Serpent.’ Mythology speaks of a serpent that devours the sun, of a Storm-Serpent, which the Sun assails with his rays; they are the serpents, dragons and monsters with whom the Solar heroes of the Aryan mythology wage their contests, which Herakles even in his cradle crushes and afterwards overpowers at Lerna and Nemea; the same, which sometimes, on the other hand, keep their ground and come forth victorious from the battle with the Sun, when the Sun, repulsed by a boisterous Storm, is forced to abandon the celestial battle-field.

A serpent on the way, An adder on the path, That bites the horse’s heels, So that the rider falls backwards,

(Gen. XLIX. 17), they are called in the Hebrew hymn of the battle of the Rain-serpent with the Sun-horse.[515] It is this same serpent that bears a ‘fiery flying serpent’ (sârâph meʿôphêph, Is. XIV. 29), i.e. the Lightning; that in common with the lightning is called the ‘Flying Serpent’ (nâchâsh bârîach, Is. XXVII. 1), for whose conqueror the Sun, the monotheistic ideas of later times substituted Jahveh ‘who with his might lashes the sea, and who with his intelligence pierces the monster (Rahab); by whose breath the heaven becomes bright, whose hand has stabbed the _flying serpent_’ (Job XXVI. 12, 13). The hissing of this flying Serpent is said in an American myth to be the Thunder; and the Lightning is called by the Algonquins an immense serpent, which God spat out.[516] The Rain itself is regarded in mythology as a serpent; the columns of water which fall in a serpentine course to the earth are called the ‘Crooked Serpent’ (nâchâsh ʿaḳallâthôn). The flying Lightning, the crooked Serpent (both livyâthân), and the great Monster in the sea, which tries to devour the Sun when he sinks into the sea in the evening, are assailed by the Sun, and the monotheistic prophet transfers the attack upon them to Jahveh (Is. XXVII. 1; compare Ps. LXXVI. 4 [3]). It is to be noted that, in speaking of night and storms, even the later poetry uses the expression that they ‘bite, wound,’ because the Serpent of darkness and tempest bites and hurts the Sun. ‘I said, Surely the darkness will bite me (yeshûphênî), and the night [will bite] the light near me’ (Ps. CXXXIX. 11); and so of the storm (Job IX. 17). Everywhere here the verb is used which is employed in Gen. III. 15 to denote that the serpent wounds the heel of the man. In these passages of poetry, therefore, we find an echo of the myth which declares that the Serpent of the storm, when victorious, bites, wounds, or even swallows down the hero of the Sun. We encounter the Rain described still more clearly as a serpent in the sacred literature of the Parsees, in the first chapter of the Vendidâd, verse 2, where it is said that Ahuramazdao created Airyana-vaêjô to be the best of all lands, whilst in opposition to his act the Deadly Aegrô mainyus created the ‘flowing serpent’ (azhim raoidhitem) and the snow. Professor Haug was the discoverer of this explanation of the _azhim raoidhitem_;[517] nevertheless he translates it ‘a powerful serpent,’ as he thinks that the word ‘flowing’ can be only understood of the ejection of the venom, or of the writer’s remembrance of a warm spring which may have existed in the land Airyana-vaêjô. It is a very obvious conjecture that the _flowing_ serpent means the Rain; the more so because it is mentioned in conjunction with Snow.[518] The last shoots of this mythological conception are discovered in the system of the Ophites, in which the serpent represents a _moist substance_.[519]

Levi (with Simeon, whose etymological value is no longer determinable), is introduced in the Hebrew myth (Gen. XXXIV.) as the slayer of Chamôr ‘the Ass’ and Shekem (see above, p. 125). Of the same two brothers it is said in the fragments of hymns already quoted, sometimes that ‘for their amusement they destroyed the bull’ (XLIX. 6)—the horned solar animal whose horns (rays) the storm-serpents eradicate (ʿiḳḳerû). It is at the same time perfectly clear in this interpretation that no difficulty at all resides in what is always troubling the expounders of these passages—in the fact, namely, that these brothers are said in the hymn (or Blessing) to have killed a bull (shôr), whilst no mention is made in the narrative of any such act.

§ 15. In the Biblical story of the family of Jacob we have met with a few of those myths of Love which the Aryan mythology developed in such variety and richness. One of the best known myths of this kind is the story of Oedipus and Jokaste. The king of Thebes received a sad oracle, declaring that he would be exposed to serious danger from a son who would be born to him by his wife Jokaste. He therefore exposed Oedipus, his new-born son; and the latter, having been marvellously saved from death and educated at Corinth, travelled to Thebes when grown to manhood, but killed his father on the way. Arrived at Thebes, he delivered the city from the terror of the Sphinx, and was proclaimed king, after which he married his mother Jokaste. When he received information of the two horrible crimes that he had unconsciously committed, the murder of his father and the incest with his mother, in despair he put out his own eyes and came to a tragic end. Everyone knows this celebrated Hellenic story, which in the Oedipus-Tragedy was worked out powerfully in its ethical bearings so as to excite the emotions and touch the heart.

Oedipus kills his father, marries his mother, and dies, a blind and worn-out old man. The hero of the Sun murders the father who begot him—the Darkness; he shares his bed with his mother—the Evening-glow, from whose womb (in the character of the Morning-glow) he had been born; he dies _blind_—the Sun sets. We have seen above that the setting sun loses the bright light of its eyes.[520]

What a universal act of the human mind, and how little affected by ethnological distinctions, the production of myths is, and what agreement is consequently discovered in the direction taken by this myth-formation among the most dissimilar peoples and races of the earth, will be most strikingly brought home to us by the discovery that this very myth of marriage with a mother occurs among the Hebrews just as much as among the Aryans. We have already seen that Reuben marries his father’s wife Bilhah. We observe that in the Hebrew myth the hero of Darkness occupies the central position, whereas in the Hellenic it is the Solar hero who shares his mother’s bed. But while the myth of Reuben and Bilhah is only mentioned quite shortly in the Old Testament, there is another myth which has grown into a long story in the Biblical narrative—that of Lot’s daughters. But before we pass to this, I wish to call attention to a concurrence which I believe has never yet been noticed, but which may excite to further meditations. The whole story of Oedipus, quite in the form in which we find it among the Hellenes, occurs also as an _Arabic tradition_, without change except in the persons. One of the many Nimrods which the Arabic legend seized upon (six Namâridâ ‘Nimrods’ are commonly reckoned),[521] son of Kenaʿan and Salchâ, is the Oedipus of the Arabic story. In consequence of an intimidating prophecy, he is exposed by his parents, that he may die and not be a source of danger to his father. But he is miraculously suckled by a tigress (whence his name Nimrûd is said to be derived, for nimr is ‘tiger’ in Arabic), and subsequently brought up by the inhabitants of a neighbouring village. When grown to manhood he contrives to bring together a great army, and becomes involved in a war against his father Kenaʿan, whom he slays in the decisive battle. He marches in triumph into his capital, and marries his mother Salchâ. Thus the outlines of the Oedipus-story have been attached to the solar hero of the Semites, Nimrod the hunter. The story is told at full length in the long introduction to the Romance of ʿAntar (I. 13 _seq._), and I leave it to readers competent to judge, to decide between two possibilities. Either the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks and simply took to themselves this version of the Oedipus-story; in this case the remarkable fact of such a transference would provoke a searching enquiry into the middle points between Greece and Arabia, which made it possible to borrow mythology, and also into the extent and nature of such borrowings. Or we may assume that the story was independently and gradually formed by the Arabs without external influence, so that the elements of the Arabian as of the Greek story reach back to the primeval age of the creation of myths, and that with the Arabs also it was originally a myth of the war of the Sun with the Night, and his union with the Evening-glow. The latter view is favoured by the circumstance that in the Arabian version the story of Oedipus putting out his eyes is wanting—a feature which would certainly have been taken if the Arabian story were only a borrowed one. But the above-mentioned questions ought to be investigated before any decision in favour of one of these possibilities can be arrived at, however inclined I may be from personal feeling towards the assumption of borrowing.[522]

The story of Lot and his daughters as told in Genesis in one of the Biblical passages most notorious for its obscenity; let us see, however, what appears to have been its original meaning. When the aged Lôṭ and his family were saved from the Divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrha, which converted those cities into a sea of bitumen, he left his wife behind him, converted into a pillar of salt, at a point of the coast of the Dead Sea, which is still shown to credulous travellers, and lived in a cave with his two unmarried daughters. These made their old father drunk in two successive nights, and perpetrated with him an act of unchastity which is to us almost unmentionable (Gen. XIX. 30–38). But the science of Mythology has often saved the honour and moral worth of primitive humanity by restoring the original mythological meaning of many a story; and so here we shall be able to prove that the Lôṭ-story, in the form in which we have received it, is only the tradition of the myth of the Sun and the Night, the understanding of which was lost in a later unmythological generation. Through the clever succession of ideas suggested by the solar theory, the science of Mythology on Aryan ground at one blow caused the ideal heights of Olympus to tower in their original purity above the endless chain of scandalous acts which mythology misunderstood attributed to the immoral inhabitants of the mountain of the Gods; and the method which guides us in these studies will aim at the same result on the domain of Hebrew mythology.

We return to Lôṭ. This name (formed from the root lûṭ ‘to cover’) denotes ‘he who covers.’ ‘Darkness _covers_ the earth, and clouds the nations’ (Is. LX. 2). ‘For I did not shrink before the Darkness, when thick darkness _covered_ (everything) before my face’ (Job XXIII. 17). ‘Thou hast pressed us down to the dwelling-place of the sea-monsters, and _covered_ us _over_ with deep shadow’ (Ps. XLIV. 20 [19]). The Semitic designations of darkness are mostly formed from roots denoting ‘to cover’: so e.g. ʿalâṭâ in Hebrew, ʿishâ in Arabic;[523] and the most prominent Semitic word for Night, layil, laylâ, etymologically means only something that _covers_.[524] In Aryan languages also, the Sanskrit Varuṇa and the Greek οὔρανος, which denote the overclouded sky, are formed from the root _var_ ‘to cover,’ in opposition to the bright day-sky, Mitra.[525] Keeping on Semitic ground, we find in Arabic copious illustrations of this conception. The words ġashiya, damasa, ġatha, saja, etc. (compare ġardaḳat al-leyl, taʾaṭṭam al-leyl), combine the notions of Darkness and Covering-up. Accordingly the coming on of night is expressed by janna al-ẓalâm, literally ‘the darkness has covered up’ (e.g. Romance of ʿAntar, V. 80. 3); and for the simple words ‘of an evening,’ or ‘at night,’ the Arabic expression is taḥt al-leyl ‘under the night,’[526] or fuller taḥt astâr al-ẓalâm ‘under the veils of the night’ (ʿAntar, X. 70, 1); and the Night is above the day, ‘aleyhâ.’[527] The Night is a garment or carpet spread out over the Day. ‘It is he,’ it is said in the Ḳorân (Sûr. XXV. v. 49), ‘who made the Night as a garment or veil for you.’ ‘We have made the Night as a clothing’ (Sûr. LXXVIII. v. 10).[528] The Arabic poet Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî uses the most palpable expression for this conception of the darkness of night. Describing his swift camels, on which he traversed great distances at Night, he says (I. 131. v. 4) ‘in their swift course they tore the mantle of night,’ i.e. they ran so quickly that they unrolled the garment which covers the surface of the earth at night. On this conception of the nature of Night I believe a peculiar expression in the Arabic language to be based. In the old classical Arabic, nights which either have no moonshine at all, or have none at the beginning and only a little quite at the end, are called layâlin durʿun; and when a verb is required, adraʿa al-shahr is said. This adraʿa is unquestionably a denominative verb from dirʿ, which signifies a ‘breast-plate,’ or a breast-covering of any sort. The Arabic expressions just quoted are founded on the idea that the breast (al-ṣadr), i.e. the upper side, the first part, of such nights is dark, covered by a garment, so that only the uncovered lower side or end is visible. In the cosmogony of Mohammedan legends, Night is represented as a _curtain_, ḥijâb.[529]

The clothing of the Night is of black colour, leylâ ḥâlikat al-jilbâb, as is said in Arabic,[530] (compare μελάμπεπλος νύξ[531]), a ‘pitchy mantle,’ as Shakespeare says,

The day begins to break, and night is fled Whose pitchy mantle overveil’d the earth. _King Henry VI._ First Part, II. 2.[532]

And in Arabic poetry also we meet with night described as a ‘pitchy mantle.’ For the poet Abû-l-Shibl says in a remarkable elegy[533]:

Shamsun kaʾanna-ẓ-ẓalâma albasahâ * thauban min-az-zifti au min-al-ḳîrî A sun, as if darkness had clothed him With a garment of resin or pitch.

The darker the Night, the thicker is the black cloak with which it is provided. Even modern languages have expressions like _thick_ darkness (Hungarian _vastag setétség_); in Arabic a very dark night is called a night with a heavy covering, leyl murjahinn.[534]

The name Lôṭ, accordingly, signifies, like the Hellenic female forms Kalyke, Kalypso (from καλύπτω), the _Covering Night_. It is very significant of the Night that the Greek figures are represented as weaving clothes for the Thunderer:[535] they weave the cloak with which they cover over the world when they spread darkness over it. Surely no one will after all this doubt that the name Lot is a designation of the Covering Night. Should this be still doubtful, perhaps the following fact from the domain of the Arabic language may bring conviction. Everyone knows the Arabic word kâfir, at least in its usual meaning of Infidel. Even the earlier Arabian philologians, who, notwithstanding frequent amusing whims and hobbies, often exhibit a fine feeling and very sober judgment as to etymology, said that this word received the meaning Infidel only through the dogmatism of Islâm, that it originally denoted the _Coverer_, and that the transition of meaning was founded on the idea that the Infidel covers up God’s omnipotence. Similarly in Hebrew the verb kâphar is said of God when he _forgives_ (i.e. covers) the sins of men; in Arabic ġafar.[536] In Arabic the Unthankful is also a kâfir, a ‘Coverer,’ since he _covers_ the blessings he has received: and in late Hebrew he is similarly termed kephûy ṭôbhâ ‘one who covers up the good.’[537] In short, the kâfir is properly the Coverer. Now the darkness of night is called kâfir by old Arabian poets. We have already (in the Tenth Section of this chapter, p. 134), quoted for another purpose the verse of the poet of the tribe Mâzin: ‘The Shining one stretches his right hand towards him who _covers up_,’ where the latter is kâfir, the Night. The celebrated poet Lebîd, too, says in his prize-poem (Muʿallaḳâ, v. 65): ‘Until the stars stretch out their hands towards the kâfir, and the weaknesses of the boundaries are covered over by their darkness,’

Ḥatta iḏâ alḳat yadan fî kâfirin * waʾajanna ʿaurâti-th-thuġûri ẓalâmuhâ.

And the poet al-Ḥumeyd says, ‘They (the camels) go to water before the breaking of the morning, whilst the son of splendour (the dawn) is still _hiding in the cloak_,’ i.e. before it is yet day,

Fawaradat ḳabla-nbilâji-l-fajri * wabnu ḏukâʾa _kâminun fî kafri_.[538]

A very witty use of the application of the epithet _kâfir_ to the Night is make by the poet Behâ al-Dîn Zuheyr. He would fain prolong the duration of the night, which passes away far too soon for all the pleasures that it brings him in the midst of a merry circle, and so he says: ‘To me is due from thee the reward of a Champion of the Faith [in battle against the infidels], if it is true that Night is a _kâfir_ (an infidel, properly a ‘coverer’),

Lî fîka ajru mujâhidin * in ṣaḥḥa anna-l-leyla kâfir.[539]

As the Darkness of night is what covers over and hides, so on the other hand the Dawn, or the Sun in general, is that which uncovers and discloses. We have met with this conception before in the case of Noah (p. 131). In Arabic safara or asfara is said of the _uncovering_ of any concealed object, and the same words are used of the breaking-forth of the morning sun. There is no doubt that this latter usage is deduced from the signification ‘to reveal, uncover;’ the instance quoted in the lexicons, ‘The night which removes the cover from the morning of the Friday’ (yusfir ʿan), i.e. which precedes Friday, shews by the preposition ʿ_an_ that ‘to uncover’ is the fundamental signification. Thus the Arabic etymologists whom I mentioned in a former work[540] may be right in a certain sense in tracing back most of the derivations of the root safar to this sense. But in Egyptian and in the Arabic of the desert the word al-sufrâ denotes the Sunset, the reason of which is by no means clear.[541] No doubt can now be entertained that our Lot is identical with his namesake the Arabic Kâfir the Concealer, the Covering Night. Now we can consider the myth. ‘The daughters of Night form a sexual connexion with their father.’ When the evening glow, which is a daughter of the Night (for, as we have seen, the myth identifies the morning and the evening glow), unites with the shades of night and becomes darker and dimmer, so as at length to lose itself in the night, the myth-creators said, ‘The daughters of Lot, the Coverer, are going to bed with their father.’ From the bright, lively character, which the myth must have attributed to the Glow in comparison with the dark, heavy Night, they would naturally regard the aged Lot as the victim of an intrigue of his lustful daughters; whereas in the Aryan myth it is Prajâpati who uses force against his daughter Ushas. The names of Lot’s daughters are not given in the Old Testament; but we know them from another source. The Arabic legend in which the story of Lot, communicated by Jews, likewise finds a place, tells us their names. It is scarcely credible that these are pure inventions of the Arabs; it is much more probable that they received them, as they did much else, from the traditions of the Jews. But the Jewish tradition itself has lost the names, as it has lost much else that was not written down. In the Arabic statements, however, there occur such various versions of the names as to show clearly that they are instances of the corruption by which foreign names are constantly ruined beyond recognition in Arabic manuscripts. One version gives Rayya as the name of the elder, Zoġar as that of the younger (see Yâḳût, II. 933. 22, 934. 16); and from the latter a town is said to be named, which is mentioned in some ancient Arabic poems. Ibn Badrûn (ed. Dozy, p. 8) calls them something like Rasha and Raʿûsha (or Raʿvasha?); Masʿûdî (_Prairies d’or_, II. 193) Zaha and Raʿva. Among these differing forms, every one of which is probably based on a corrupt text, Zaha is the only one that may confirm the solar character of Lot’s daughters in the myth. But I think the myth of Lot is clear enough in itself to dispense with any such problematic confirmation.

If the conception of Kerûbhîm (Cherubim) is native to the Hebrews, and not borrowed at a later period from foreign parts—a question which must be regarded as still an open one—then we may find here also the _Coverer_ (compare kerûbh has-sôkhêkh ‘the cherub that covereth,’ Ezek. XXVIII. 14), the covering cloud; and hence may be derived the function of concealing and covering which was given to the cherubim in the later ceremonial, as also their connexion with the curtains.[542] ‘Jahveh rides on the Cherub,’ says one of the later religious poets (2 Sam. XXII. 11), ‘and appears on the wings of the wind; he makes darkness round about him, tents, collections of water, gloomy clouds.’ Here the dark overclouded rainy sky is described; and when Jahveh sends rain over the earth, he rides on the Cherub, and ‘mists are beneath his feet,’ and the dust which he turns up while riding, forms the shechâḳîm (properly the dust), the overcast sky. Jahveh is described in other passages also as riding on clouds (Is. XIX. 1). Accordingly kerûbh would originally denote the covering cloud, and whatever is connected with the Cherubim in later theological conceptions would be a transformation of ancient mythological ideas.[543] Now the root _krb_ is used in Himyarite inscriptions in titles of kings, as Mukrib Saba, or Tobbaʿ kerîb, i.e. as Von Kremer explains them,[544] ‘_Protector_ of Saba,’ ‘_Protecting_ Tobbaʿ.’ This is easily explained by the fact that in the Semitic languages words signifying ‘to protect’ are often derived from the fundamental idea of ‘covering.’ ‘The Cherubim spread forth their wings’ (1 Kings VIII. 7), i.e. they cover. To spread out the wings (kenâphayîm) over some one is in Biblical language the usual expression for the protection which is allotted to him. In Arabic the same word (kanaf) signifies not only a bird’s wing, but also concealment, shade (compare Ps. XCI. 1–4), and protection.[545]

The opinion that the Cherubim were borrowed from foreign parts is accordingly much less probable than that which maintains that they originated with the Hebrews;[546] and the latter view receives further support from the fact that the Cherubim can be easily fitted without any violence into the system of Hebrew mythology. It is again supported by the connexion between Cherubim and Seraphim, the latter of which are originally Hebrew. This connexion agrees moreover with the results of our mythological researches. As Kerûbh as ‘Coverer’ belongs to the dark cloudy sky, so the Serâphîm must be a mythological conception pertaining to the same series, if we adopt the correct interpretation of them as _Dragons_,[547] and remember the mythological meaning of serpents and dragons (_supra_, p. 27, 184, _sq._). It then becomes probable that the theological significance of Cherubim and Seraphim belongs to the remains of the very earliest form of Hebrew religion, and approximates to the facts of which I shall speak at Chapter VI. § 5, pp. 224, 5.

Footnote 244:

Osiander (_Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1853, VII. 437) is inclined to combine with this the old Arabic _Rayâm_ or _Riyâm_.

Footnote 245:

The added Abh in Abhrâm, compared with the other expressions in which the quality of _father_ is not emphasized, finds an exact parallel in Δη ( = Γη)-μητήρ and Γαῖα.

Footnote 246:

_Opuscula Arabica_ (ed. W. Wright, Leyden 1859), p. 30. 2; 34. 5. This usage is made possible by the signification _Cloud_, which is peculiar to the word samâ in Arabic (Sprenger, _Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed_, I. 544).

Footnote 247:

Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, I. 311.

Footnote 248:

See the Count von Baudissin, _Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte_, Leipzig 1876, I. p. 306 _et seqq._

Footnote 249:

Or Future, or Imperfect, as it is more generally termed.—TR.

Footnote 250:

It is worthy of note that in Arabic _pluralia fracta_ can be formed from this class of proper names. An interesting example of this is Tanʿum^u b. Ḳamiʾata, the name of the ancestor of the tribe Tanâʿum. See Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 85 and gloss _h_.

Footnote 251:

Strictly the Dawn.—TR.

Footnote 252:

This theory explains the connexion of ṣârach with zârach ‘to be bright.’ Accordingly, I should like to place the Hebrew ṣâraʿath _lepra_ in this same etymological group, as the relationship between ע and ה does not require demonstration; the signification would then be that of ‘whiteness’ (see Lev. XIII. 3, 4).

Footnote 253:

Hermann Vámbéry, _Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik_, Innsbruck 1870, p. 238 _a_.

Footnote 254:

E.g. vol. IV. 26 ult.; XVIII. 3, 11. 19, 93. 11; XXV. 5. 12, 6. 6 &c. I always quote the octavo edition of the _Romance of ʿAntar_, printed by Sheikh Shâhîn in thirty-two small vols., Cairo 1286.

Footnote 255:

In De Sacy, _Chrestomathie Arabe_, II. 151. 13.

Footnote 256:

It is entitled _Nuzhat al-asrâr fî muḥâwarat al-leyl w-al-nahâr_, and is in MS. in the University Library at Leipzig: cod. Ref. no. 357, fol. 11–18.

Footnote 257:

Of this literature I will now draw attention only to a Ḳasîdâ of the old Persian poet Asadî, which is now made accessible in the edition of Rückert’s _Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser_, published by the care of W. Pertsch, Gotha 1874, pp. 59–63. But it contains little that harmonises with the argumentation of the above-employed Arabic tract.

Footnote 258:

_Nuzhat al-asrâr_ &c., fol. 14 _verso_, 17 _verso_.

Footnote 259:

E.g. Abû-l-ʿAlâ’s Poems in the edition with commentary, Bûlâḳ 1286, II. 107, line 1: wa-tabtasimu-l-ashrâṭu fajran.

Footnote 260:

See Abû-l-ʿAlâ, _ibid_., p. 211, line 5: fî maḍḥaki-l-barḳi.

Footnote 261:

Vol. I. 193. Compare a beautiful passage in a poem of Ibn Muṭeyr, given by Nöldeke, _Beiträge zur Poesie der alten Araber_, p. 34, to which we shall recur farther on.

Footnote 262:

_Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 109 _et seq_.

Footnote 263:

Most persons know this tense as Future, or as Imperfect.—TR.

Footnote 264:

Similar correlative names in Hellenic mythology are Pro-metheus and Epi-metheus.

Footnote 265:

Muslim’s _Collection of Traditions_, edition with Commentary, Cairo 1284, V. 118. The commentator, Al-Nawawî, puts the name al-ʿÂḳib in combination with another name of the Prophet of identical meaning, viz. al-Muḳfî. The name al-ʿÂḳib occurs elsewhere also as a proper name, e.g. as the name of a friend of the poet al-Aʿsha (_Kitâb al-aġânî_, VI. 73).

Footnote 266:

_Shâhnâmeh_, ed. Mohl, VII. v. 633, according to Rückert’s ingenious interpretation in the _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1856, X. 145.

Footnote 267:

_De Principiis_, ed. Kopp, p. 385.

Footnote 268:

The sun itself is called a golden egg (Ad. Kuhn, _Zeitschr. für vergl. Sprachforschung_, I. 456).

Footnote 269:

_King Henry VI._, Part II. Act IV. beginning.

Footnote 270:

Heinrich Heine, _The Baltic_ [_sic!_ i.e. ‘die Nordsee’ = the German Ocean], Part 2, No. 4 in E.A. Bowring’s translation.

Footnote 271:

In Henne-am-Rhyn, _Die deutsche Volkssage_, Leipzig 1874, p. 292, No. 544.

Footnote 272:

Catullus, LIX. [LXI.] vv. 84–86.

Footnote 273:

Emîr Chosrev of Delhi, in Rückert, _Grammatik, Rhetorik und Poetik der Perser_, p. 69. 6.

Footnote 274:

See Excursus C.

Footnote 275:

Pauly, _Realencyklopädie_, VII. 1277; Wilhelm Bacher, Niẓâmî’s _Leben und Werke_, Leipzig 1871, p. 97, note 13.

Footnote 276:

Al-Beiḍâwî, _Commentarius in Coranum_, ed. Fleischer, I. 572. 17. Bacher, _l.c._

Footnote 277:

Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, II. 170.

Footnote 278:

See Excursus D.

Footnote 279:

See e.g. Brugsch, _Histoire d’Égypte_, 1st ed., I. 37.

Footnote 280:

_De Osir. et Isid._, c. XXXIV.

Footnote 281:

_De Pythiae oraculis_, c. XII., and compare the pseudo-Plutarch, _De vita et poësi Homeri_, c. CIV.

Footnote 282:

So says Yalḳûṭ. Shôchêr Ṭôbh has the reading Akramânia, which is difficult of identification (Germania?).

Footnote 283:

Yalḳûṭ and Shôchêr Ṭôbh on Ps. XIX. 7.

Footnote 284:

_Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 273.

Footnote 285:

See p. 15.

Footnote 286:

Compare Eckhel, _Doctrina Nummorum veterum_, V. 15.

Footnote 287:

_Die Religion der Römer_, Erlangen 1836, II. 218. Compare Mommsen, _History of Rome_ (translation), I. 185, ed. of 1868.

Footnote 288:

Fr. Lenormant, _Les premières civilisations_, Paris 1874, II. 29–31.

Footnote 289:

It is well known that the story of Jonah was long ago connected with the myth of Herakles and Hesione, or that of Perseus and Andromeda (Bleek, _Einleitung ins A. T._, Berlin 1870, p. 577). Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 306, should also be consulted. What Emil Burnouf says in his _La Science des Religions_, Paris 1872, p. 263, is quite untenable; he finds in the myth ‘un image de la naissance du feu divin et de la vie dont il est le principe.’

Footnote 290:

Nonnus, _Dionysiaca_ XL. 443; Movers, _Religion der Phönizier_, p. 394.

Footnote 291:

Aesch., _Prom._, vv. 505, 467, Dind. I must also refer to Tangaloa, the chief figure in the Polynesian mythology, who is described as the first navigator. This characteristic, and the fact that Tangaloa is regarded as the originator of every handicraft (see the chapter on the Myth of Civilisation), with other features on which Schirren lays stress in determining his nature, seem to claim for him a solar character. Gerland (_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 242) disputes this interpretation.

Footnote 292:

_Jahrbücher für die bibl._ Wissenschaft, X. 21; _History of Israel_, I. 265 _et seq._

Footnote 293:

In his essay _Phönikische Analekten, in the Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1865, XIX. 536.

Footnote 294:

Sepp, _Jerusalem und das Heilige Land_, Schaffhausen 1863, II. 687.

Footnote 295:

_Vergelijkende geschiedenis van de egyptische en mesopotamische Godsdiensten_, Amsterdam 1872, p. 434.

Footnote 296:

Julius Braun, _Naturgeschichte der Sage_, I. 41. See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 316.

Footnote 297:

E. Jacques, _Vocabulaire Arabe-malacassa_, in _Journ. Asiat._, 1833, XI. 129, 130.

Footnote 298:

Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 242.

Footnote 299:

‘Wimpern der Morgenröthe,’ and so Ewald translates aphʿappayim in Job, i.e. eyelashes, _eyelids_ being ‘Augenlieder.’ Yet Gesenius understands the word as _palpebrae_, i.e. eyelids (though both this word and _cilium_ are occasionally used indiscriminately in either sense). Βλέφαρον is only ‘eyelid;’ the Arabic ḥawâjib is only ‘eyelash.’—TR.

Footnote 300:

Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 1003. _a_; compare Orph. VIII. I. 13. In the _Thesmophoriazusae_ v. 17, Aristophanes makes Euripides call the eye ‘the imitation of the disc of the sun;’ compare _Acharn_. v. 1184: ὦ κλεινὸν ὄμμα, ‘O glorious eye!’ as an address to the Sun.

Footnote 301:

Al Buchârî, IX. 30, 35.

Footnote 302:

_Yaçna_, I. 35, III. 49.

Footnote 303:

Eberh. Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_, p. 165.

Footnote 304:

Haneberg, _Religiöse Alterthümer der Bibel_, Münich 1869, p. 49; Movers, _Die Phönizier_, I. 411, where other combinations are given.

Footnote 305:

The seven days of the week are imagined to have a connexion with the sun. According to Diodorus, I. 272, the inhabitants of Rhodes at the time of Cadmus worshipped the Sun-god, who had begotten seven sons on that island.

Footnote 306:

Muir, _Sanskrit Texts_, V. 64.

Footnote 307:

Yâḳûṭ, _Geogr. Wörterb._, III. 762.

Footnote 308:

See Excursus E.

Footnote 309:

Hartung, _Religion und Mythologie der Griechen_, Leipzig 1865, II. 87–94.

Footnote 310:

_al-Meydânî Majmaʾ al-amthâl_, II. 111. 21.

Footnote 311:

Wa-kân auwal mâ asbal al-leyl riwâḳah wa-ḳad iswadd al-ẓalâm biaġ-sâḳah, _Romance of ʿAntar_, V. 170. 17. Accordingly, insadal is said of night as well as of a tent, e.g. _ʿAntar_, VI. 60. 14, 95. 5.

Footnote 312:

I wish to mention here a suggestion received in a letter from Prof. de Goeje of Leyden, to take the name Hebhel in the appellative sense ‘herdsman,’ and compare it with the Arabic abil, the initial breathing being aspirated. The Hebrew âbhêl, ‘pasture,’ would then belong to the same group. But see also on the latter word an ingenious conjecture of Derenbourg in the _Journal Asiatique_, 1867, vol. I. p. 93.

Footnote 313:

Wa-leylatun ṭachyâʾu yarmaʿillu * fîhâ ʿala-l-shârî nadan muchḍallu, _MS. of Univ. Leyden, Cod. Warner_, No. 597, p. 345.

Footnote 314:

See above, pp. 42, 43.

Footnote 315:

_Die Genesis_, Leipzig 1860, p. 64.

Footnote 316:

Levy, in the _Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1860, XIV. 404.

Footnote 317:

Compare Gelpke’s article _Neutestamentliche Studien_, in the _Theo. Studien u. Kritiken_, 1849, pp. 639 _et seq._

Footnote 318:

See Excursus F.

Footnote 319:

_Premières Civilisations_, II. 81.

Footnote 320:

We do not wish to overlook the fact that the word Ḳayn in Himyaritic is a name of dignity, like Prince, Ruler, Lord, and may therefore, if this signification is adopted, be a synonym for Baʿal. See Prætorius in the _Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1872, XXVI. 432.

Footnote 321:

See Fleischer’s _Nachträgliches_ to Levy’s _Chald. Wörterb. über d. Targ._, II. 577. _b_.

Footnote 322:

_Yaçna_, I. 35, XVII. 22; _Khordavesta_, III. 49, VII. 4; Spiegel, _Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_, III. 27: ‘The beautiful Dawn we praise; the brilliant, endowed with brilliant horses, who remembers men, remembers heroes, and is provided with splendour, with dwellings. The morning Dawn we praise; the cheering, endowed with fast horses.’ _Vendidad_, XXI. 20: ‘Rise up, O splendid Sun! with thy fast horses, and shine on the creatures.’ In the Sun’s Yast (it is the sixth), in almost every verse from the invocation to the end of the prayer, this epithet is applied to the Sun; and in the tenth Yast chariots and flaming horses are assigned to Mithra (see the references in Spiegel, _l. c._ III. xxv.).

Footnote 323:

A rough imitation of:

Phöbus in der Sonnendroschke Peitschte seine Flammenrosse. _Atta Troll_, XXII. 1.

Footnote 324:

Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, pp. 106–109.

Footnote 325:

According to Rawlinson this conception came from the Assyrians to the Persians. Put the learned explorer of Assyrian antiquity seems to ignore the solar significance of the winged disc when he says: ‘The conjecture is probable that ... the wings signify Omnipresence and the circle Eternity’ (_History of Herodotus_, note to I. c. 135, I. 215 of the edition of 1862).

Footnote 326:

Hebrew scholars will observe that I here abandon the usual interpretation, and understand eshkenâ in the second member of the setting of the sun. In this way the first member speaks of the rising, the second of the setting of the sun (= bâ hash-shemesh), which dips into the water at the further edge (horizon) of the sea (acharîth yâm).

Footnote 327:

See Excursus G.

Footnote 328:

_Iliad_, VIII. 485. See Plutarch, _De vita et poes. Hom._, c. CIII.

Footnote 329:

E.g. al-Suytûṭi in the _Ḥusn al-muḥâḍarâ_, &c: ‘fa iḏâ achaḏat fî-l-hubût’ (ap. Weyer’s _Diss. de loco Ibn Khacanis de Ibn Zeidun_, p. 87, n. 82).

Footnote 330:

The Sun is in all the Semitic as well as in many Aryan languages grammatically feminine, and the myths frequently assign to the Sun a female form. It is therefore necessary sometimes to use the feminine pronoun.—TR.

Footnote 331:

In Ahlwardt, _Chalaf al-aḥmar_, p. 49. I. See _Vita Timuri_, II. 48: ‘ḳad janaḥat al shams lil-ġurûb.’

Footnote 332:

Compare Ps. XVII. 8, LXI. 5 [4]; and accordingly in tastîrêm besêther pânekhâ, Ps. XXXI. 21 [20], ‘thou hidest them in the hiding-place of thy _face_,’ we must emend pânekhâ ‘face,’ into kenâphekhâ ‘wings.’

Footnote 333:

_Romance of ʿAntar_, V. 136 ult., 236 penult. In the Babylonian epos of _Istar’s Descent to Hell_, v. 10 (Lenormant, _Premières Civilisations_, II. 85), Night is compared to a bird.

Footnote 334:

This interpretation, here erroneously employed, is occasioned by the fact that in the Semitic languages the notion of ‘part’ is conveyed by words which properly denote ‘side:’ the two sides of a thing are two parts of it. Thus, even in literary Arabic the word ṭaraf, and in vulgar Arabic the word jânib (which is etymologically connected with the Hebrew kânâph ‘wing’) are used quite in the sense of baʿḍ ‘a part.’ An interesting modern example of this lies before me in the Arabic text of the terms of the latest 5,000,000_l._ loan by the Egyptian Minister of Finance, in which the third article says: 'The shares fall under the ordinary laws regulating buying and selling and bequest—sawâʾan kâna fî jânib minhu au fîhi bil-kâmil—equally whether it concerns a portion of them or the whole' (_al-Jawâʾïb_, a weekly paper, XIV. No. 695, p. 2, c. 2, of the year 1291).

Footnote 335:

E.g. _Romance of ʿAntar_, V. 80 ult., 168 v. 6: Saarḥalu ʿankum lâ urîdu sawâʾakum * waʾaḳṣidukum fî junḥi kulli ẓalâmin ‘I go away from you, I want not the like of you; but I shall seek you under the wings of all darkness.’

Footnote 336:

_al-Aġânî_, II. 12. 3, is also noticeable: ‘ḳamrun tawassaṭu junḥa leylin mubridi.’

Footnote 337:

_Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 141.

Footnote 338:

Ebers, _Aegypten und die Bücher Mosis_, p. 70.

Footnote 339:

Fiske, _Myths and Myth-Makers_, pp. 71, 154.

Footnote 340:

The sun is called _celer deus_ by Ovid, _Fasti_, I. 386; and Herodotus, I. 215, says: τῶν θεῶν ὁ τάχιστος. See Hehn, _Culturpflanzen_, etc., p. 38.

Footnote 341:

_Berêshîth rabbâ_, sect. 22.

Footnote 342:

Even Philo lays the chief momentum of the story of Hagar on her flight: μέμνηται γὰρ (sc. ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος) πολλαχοῦ τῶν ἀποδιδρασκόντων, καθάπερ καὶ νῦν φάσκων ἐπὶ τῆς Ἄγαρ ὅτι κακωθεῖσα ἀπέδρα ἀπὸ προσώπου τῆς κυρίας (_De profugis_, p. 546, ed. Mangey).

Footnote 343:

I leave it for the present undecided whether the name Terach, given to Abraham’s father, belongs to this class. Ewald (_History of Israel_, I. 274) puts it in connexion with ârach ‘to wander,’ though in an ethnological sense.

Footnote 344:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 345:

The first to discover this origin of the relative asher was the Hungarian Csepregi, pupil of the great Schultens, _Dissert._, Lugd., p. 171 (quoted by Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 165): he did not, however, follow out the idea very clearly. Compare also Stade’s view, essentially the same, in the _Morgenländische Forschungen_, Leipzig 1875, p. 188; I could not get a sight of this till after the above was ready for the press. On the other side Schrader, _Jen. Literaturzeit_ 1875, p. 299.

Footnote 346:

In Assyrian the Moon is called arḥu, with a mere hamzâ (Schrader, _Assyr.-babyl. Keilinschr._, p. 282). In Arabic the reverse has happened; from warch (yârêach) has been formed the verb arracha ‘to fix the time (by the lunar calendar), to date,’ the _w_ (Heb. _y_) being weakened into hamzâ (aleph). Whether the Coptic Ioh and Arabic yûḥ are connected with yârêach (the abrasion of _r_ is not uncommon), is another question.

Footnote 347:

So Böttcher, _Ausführl. Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache_, I. 516–17.

Footnote 348:

The poet Dîk al-Jinn had a mistress named Dînâ (Ibn Challiḳân. ed. Wüstenfeld, IV. 96. 7). See also Abû ʿUyeynâ al-Muhallabî (_Agânî_, III. 128. 2, 6).

Footnote 349:

Edwin Norris, _Assyrian Dictionary_, I. 248.

Footnote 350:

We find also al-ʿulya opposed to al-dunya in Ibn Châḳân ḳalâʾïd al-ʿiḳyân, ed. Bûlâḳ 1284, p. 60 ult.: ‘wa-dâmat laka-d-dunya * wa-dâmat laka-l-ʿulya.’

Footnote 351:

Cod. Leyden, Warner’s Fund, No. 597, p. 325.

Footnote 352:

It also deserves consideration whether Dînâ as the feminine of Dân denotes the Moon: compare Lâbhân, Lebhânâ; Âshêr, Ashêrâ. In that case the above myth would speak of the abduction of the Moon by the Morning-dawn, i.e. the disappearance of the moon at sunrise. It would then be the same myth as the Hellenic one of the abduction of Helenê (Selênê) by Paris.

Footnote 353:

Angelo de Gubernatis, _ibid._ p. 278 _et seq._

Footnote 354:

See _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1855, IX. 758.

Footnote 355:

Edwin Norris, _Assyrian Dictionary_, I. 347. The signification ‘having locks’ might also be mentioned as a possibility for zalîchâ. In that case we should have to notice the Syrian zelîchê of the Peshiṭtô in _Song of Songs_, I. 11, where the parallelism to gedûlê demands something like ‘locks of hair;’ and this meaning agrees with that of zelach in Syriac: _fudit._

Footnote 356:

It is well-known that the gutturals ح ḥ and خ ch often change into ف f. The Arabic ḳadaḥ ‘cup’ becomes in Turkish ḳadef; the name Yehûd is pronounced in jest _Jufut_. Compare the Arabic naḳacha with naḳafa, and the Mehri ehû, denoting ‘mouth,’ with Arabic fû, Hebrew peh, etc.

Footnote 357:

See _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1855, IX. 758.

Footnote 358:

See Pfleiderer, _Religion und ihre Geschichte_, II. 271.

Footnote 359:

Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, pp. 159 _et seq._

Footnote 360:

2 Kings, I. 8, II. 11. Compare the fiery, flame-red chariot of Ushas (_Rigveda_, VI. 64. 7).

Footnote 361:

_Das alte Griechenland im neuen_, p. 23.

Footnote 362:

Supplement to the Augsburg _Allgem. Zeitung_, 1874, No. 344. p. 5377.

Footnote 363:

Compare Renan, _Hist. génér. des Langues sémitiques_, p. 28.

Footnote 364:

Called in the English Bible Lamech, which is derived from the pausal form Lâmĕkh through the LXX. Λάμεχ, as is the case with many names, e.g. Abel, Japheth, Jared, though not all; cf. on the other side Jether, Zerah, Peleg. The ordinary form, such as Lĕmĕch, ought to be preferred.—TR.

Footnote 365:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, pp. 138–150.

Footnote 366:

See the whole of Chapter VI.

Footnote 367:

See note 364, p. 129:.

Footnote 368:

Ps. XIX. 5 [4]. We have already remarked (p. 111) that the tents which originally belonged to the sky at night are frequently transferred to the sky of daytime; see also Is. XL. 22. And Noah uncovers himself, bethôkh oholô ‘in the middle of his tent’ (Gen. IX. 21).

Footnote 369:

In al-Jauharî, s.r. _kfr_.

Footnote 370:

In Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 193; ḥatta ara aʿnâḳa ṣubḥin ablajâ * tasûru fî aʿjâzi leylin adʿajâ. The expression aʿjâz al-leyl also occurs in a verse of Farazdaḳ, _Kitâb al-Aġânî_, XIV. 173. 19, and of Ashgaʿ, _ibid._ XVII. 35. 13.

Footnote 371:

See also _Shâhnâmêh_, VII. 395, with Rückert’s conjecture suggested in _Zeitsch. der D. M. G.,_ 1856, X. 136.

Footnote 372:

Lazarus Geiger, _Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschl_. _Sprache und Vernunft_, I. 447.

Footnote 373:

Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, p. 228.

Footnote 374:

In G. Rawlinson’s _History of Herodotus_, I. 490 _et seq._ One might also think of the Arabic nafara ‘to fly.’ The Sun is a _fugitive_, as has been already shown.

Footnote 375:

Lenormant, _Premières Civilisations_, II. 21.

Footnote 376:

On the primary signification of the root _mrd_ in Semitic, see Fried. Delitzsch, _Studien über indogerm.-semit_. _Wurzelverwandtschaft_, Leipzig 1873, p. 74.

Footnote 377:

_Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_, p. 17, and _Die assyr.-babyl_. _Keilinschriften_, p. 212. Compare Merx, _Grammatica Syriaca_, p. 201.

Footnote 378:

Levy, _Phönizische Studien_, pt. II. p. 24.

Footnote 379:

Adolf Jellinek, _Bêth ham-midrâsh_, V. 40; see supra, p. 32.

Footnote 380:

I am fully aware that in Hebrew poetry arrows are frequently, indeed most frequently, to be understood of lightning. ‘He sends out his arrows and scatters them; lightnings in great number and discomfits them’ (Ps. XVIII. 15 [14]). But the arrows of Joseph’s adversaries must from the very nature of the myth be rays of the sun. If the hunter is the Sun, then the rays can only be something which the hunter in that ancient time used for shooting. Mythology is not the product of a well-thought-out consistent system, and so nothing is more likely than that two different things should be treated in the same way by virtue of some feature common to both. Thus the solar ray and the lightning are the same in mythology—an Arrow.

Footnote 381:

See a fuller description in Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, pp. 218–220.

Footnote 382:

J.G. Müller, _Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 429.

Footnote 383:

See this question treated and its literature cited in Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie_, 3rd ed., I. 57.

Footnote 384:

For the description of the Sun as an Opener, I am enabled to insert a supplementary datum, borrowed from a book which was published when p. 97 of the present work (to which I refer back) was already printed. In a cuneiform Hymn to Samas, the Sun-god, he is addressed thus:

O Samas! from the back of the heavens thou hast come forth: _The barrier of the shining heavens thou hast opened; Yea the gate of the heavens thou hast opened_.

(German translation of George Smith’s _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, with additions by Dr. Fr. Delitzsch, Leipzig, 1876.) The passage quoted is one of Delitzsch’s additions, p. 284. I think this Hymn is a remarkable illustration of our hypothesis that Yiphtâch, ‘the Opener,’ is a linguistic description of the Sun.

Footnote 385:

I owe to the kindness of my honoured friend Dr. Hampel, Custos of the archeological section of the Hungarian National Museum, the verification of a reference in the _Bulletino dell’ Instituto di Correspondenza Archeologica_, 1853, p. 150, to a stone which exhibits the same representation of the head of Janus as the coin in question, viz.: ‘una testa doppia, di cui una facie è barbata, l’altra giovanile.’

Footnote 386:

See _Naphtali_, discussed in § 14 of this Chapter; p. 178.

Footnote 387:

Compare _Sol languidus_ (Lucretius, _De rerum nat._, V. 726).

Footnote 388:

The Arabian historians transfer the entire Biblical story of Samson (Arabic Shamsûn), to the time of the Mulûk al-ṭawâʾif; and in their narrative the hero fights against Rûm [i.e. the Greek Empire at Constantinople]; for the jawbone of an ass is substituted that of a camel. See Ibn al-Athîr al-Taʾrîch al-kâmil, Bûlâḳ edition, I. 146.

Footnote 389:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 144, where Sif and Loki of the Scandinavian mythology are also mentioned. The hairiness of the solar heroes has been translated into an ethnographical peculiarity in modern Greek popular legends. Bernhard Schmidt (_Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, I. 206) says, ‘In Zante I encountered the idea that the entire power of the ancient Greeks lay in three hairs on the breast, and vanished if these were cut off, but returned when the hairs grew again.’

Footnote 390:

See Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 345, note 1.

Footnote 391:

In Gen. XXVII. 11, the received punctuation is îsh sâʿîr.—Tr.

Footnote 392:

Compare Tiele, _Vergel. Geschied._ p. 447.

Footnote 393:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 146; see above, p. 34.

Footnote 394:

_Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit_, pp. 45–60.—_Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft_, Bd. II. book 3.—Compare Lazarus, _Leben der Seele_, II. 80; _ibid._ p. 185 note.

Footnote 395:

For _Silver_ the three North-Semitic languages, Assyrian, Aramaic, and Hebrew, have the same word, and in so far ‘form a strict union,’ as Schrader says, in opposition to the South-Semitic languages, which employ other words for the designation of this metal.' _Keilinschriften und das A. T._, p. 46.

Footnote 396:

Chârûṣ = gold has in recent times been frequently met with on Phenician territory, e.g. in the Inscription of Idalion published by Euting, II. 1, in the Inscription of Gebal (De Vogüé in the _Journal asiat._ 1875, I. 327), and in an unpublished Carthaginian Inscription (Derenbourg in _Journal asiat._ 1875, I. 336).

Footnote 397:

The consideration of the Hebrew cheres ‘Sun’ might suggest that both it and the old word for gold (chârûṣ), composed of possibly related sounds, both originated in the notion of _shining_.

Footnote 398:

Al-Maḳḳarî, _Analectes_, etc., Leyden edition, I. 369. 3.

Footnote 399:

Al-Jauharî, s.r. _kbr._

Footnote 400:

Yâḳût, _Geogr. Dictionary_, II. 609. 8.

Footnote 401:

_Zur himjarischen Alterthumskunde_, in _Zeitsch. der D. M. G._, 1865, XIX. 247. Compare Halévy, _Etudes sabéennes_, in _Journal asiat._, 1874, II. 523.

Footnote 402:

Pseudowâḳidî, ed. Nassau Lees, p. 181. 6.

Footnote 403:

_Hist. de l’économie politique en Turquie_, in _Journal asiat._, 1864, I. 421. Compare also Sprenger, _Alte Geographie Arabiens_, p. 56.

Footnote 404:

The use of _black_ should also be noticed; dirhem saudâ and kara ġurush.

Footnote 405:

In _al-Thaʿâlibî_ in the _Zeitsch. der D. M. G._, 1854, VII. 505.

Footnote 406:

_Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge_, p. xi.

Footnote 407:

Compare _Aġânî_, III. 90. 10. Fadaʿa bichâzinihi wa-ḳâla kam fî beyt mâlî faḳâla lahu min al-waraḳ w-al-ʿayn baḳîyyatun.

Footnote 408:

Thorbecke, _Antarah, ein vorislamischer Dichter_, Leipzig 1867, p. 41.

Footnote 409:

al-Ḥarîrî, Paris edition, 2nd ed., p. 467.

Footnote 410:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, XVII. p. 11.

Footnote 411:

M.A. Levy in _Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1870, XXIV. p. 191.

Footnote 412:

Halévy, _ibid._ p. 539.

Footnote 413:

Freytag points this word urayḳ.—TR.

Footnote 414:

J. Levy, _Chaldäisches Wörterbuch_, I. 345.

Footnote 415:

‘The Sun had long since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap; And, like a lobster boil’d, the Morn From black to red began to turn’—

—says _Hudibras_, canto II.

Footnote 416:

In the Babyl. Talmûd, Yômâ 28. b, the falling of the shades of night is described as the time when meshacharê kôthâlê ‘the walls are black.’

Footnote 417:

Called by Freytag an _eagle_.—TR.

Footnote 418:

In Harîrî (Paris edition, 2nd ed.), p. 644. 4, we read of the Dawn: ḥîna naṣal chiḍâb al-ẓalâm ‘when the dye of darkness was washed off.’ The Arabic word here used for ‘dye’ is generally employed of gay colours, e.g. al-ḥinnâ; but it is self-evident that here only al-kuḥl can be meant.

Footnote 419:

In Persian black hair is called mû i-Zengî ‘Gipsies’ hair,’ and zulf-i-Hindu, ‘Indian hair,’ i.e. black like an Indian’s (e.g. Rückert, _Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser_, p. 287). So in the well-known verse of Ḥafiẓ, in which the poet gives away all Bochara and Samarkand for the black mole (bechâl-i-Hinduwesh, ‘Indian mole’) of his Turkish boy (Dîwân Râ, no. 8. v. 1; ed. Rosenzweig, I. 24).

Footnote 420:

_Saḳt-al-zand_, I. 91. 7.

Footnote 421:

E.g. _Romance of ʿAntar_, VII. 115. line 4 from below: wa-kasa-l-leylu ḥullat al-sawâd.

Footnote 422:

Varro treats it as self-evident that ‘black’ is the most suitable epithet for Night, and is thereby tempted to a very curious etymology in his work _De ratione vocabulorum_. He explains the word _fur_ ‘thief’ by saying that in the old Latin _fur-vum_ was equivalent to ‘black,’ and thieves practise their dark deeds at night. ‘Sed in posteriore ejusdem libri parte docuit (scil. Varro) furem ex eo dictum quod veteres Romani furvum atrum appellaverint: at fures per noctem quae atra sit facilius furentur’ (Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_, I. 18. 3–6).

Footnote 423:

Opuscula arabica, ed. W. Wright, Leyden 1859, p. 30. 11; compare p. 31. 12.

Footnote 424:

_Aġânî_, XI. 44.

Footnote 425:

_Ibid._, XVIII. 139.

Footnote 426:

Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 344.

Footnote 427:

Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 345.

Footnote 428:

_Iḥyâ ʿulûm al-dîn_, II. 148.

Footnote 429:

Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 1183.

Footnote 430:

Chabas, _Etudes sur l’antiquité historique d’après les sources égyptiennes_, etc. 2nd edition, Paris 1873, p. 34, where the article by Le Page Renouf is referred to.

Footnote 431:

Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 193, whom I follow as a reliable ancient authority; al-Jauharî and Freytag after him understand aṣbaḥ somewhat differently.

Footnote 432:

Abû-l-ʿAlâ, II. 107. 3–4.

Footnote 433:

_Saḳt al-zand_, I. 93. 1. These ideas of the relations of colours are found expressed with characteristic energy by the eccentric Persian poet Abû Isḥâḳ Ḥallâjî; he says, ‘When the Sun in the blue vault turns his cheek into yellow, it makes me think of saffron-coloured viands on an azure dish’ (Rückert, _Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser_, p. 126). The conception of turning grey combines that of both colours—the white appearing beside the black. According to _Aġânî_, II. 41. 7; those clouds which combine the two colours are called shîb ‘grey’ (al-saḥâʾib allatî fîhâ sawâd wa-bayâd).

Footnote 434:

I will mention here that according to al-Ġazâlî (_Iḥjâ_, IV. 433) the stars have various colours, some tending towards red, others towards white, others towards leaden: wa-tadabbar ʿadad kawâkibihâ, wachtilâf alwânihâ fabaʿḍuhâ tamîl ila-l-ḥumrâ wa-baʿḍuhâ ila-l-bayâḍ wa-baʿḍuhâ ila launi-r-ruṣâṣ.

Footnote 435:

Abû-l-ʿAlâ, I. 195. 1.

Footnote 436:

In Yâḳût, IV. 911. 7.

Footnote 437:

Ḥarîrî’s _Maḳâmâs_, p. 675. 7: Istanâra-l-leyl al-bahîm.

Footnote 438:

See Excursus H.

Footnote 439:

_Aġânî_, I. 158. 23.

Footnote 440:

al-Anṭâḳi, _Tazyîn al-aswâḳ_, etc., p. 405.

Footnote 441:

_Maḳâmâs_, p. 128; cf. Mehren, _Rhetorik der Araber_, p. 99.

Footnote 442:

al-Buchârî, IX. 35.

Footnote 443:

The notion of the white colour of the moon is also the foundation of one of the Hebrew names of the moon. In the verse Ẓabyatun admâʾu mithla-l-hilâlî ‘a gazelle red like the new moon’ (_Aġânî_, VI. 122. 21) the moon is treated as red. But in the appellation al-layâli al-bîḍ ‘white nights,’ by which are meant nights illumined throughout by the moon, the moonshine is associated with a white colour.

Footnote 444:

_Die Höllenfahrt der Istar_, p. 75.

Footnote 445:

Halévy, _ibid._, p. 556.

Footnote 446:

See Excursus I.

Footnote 447:

See Excursus K.

Footnote 448:

Among the Arabic names of the sun, we find the curious appellation al-jaunâ (Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 324), a word of colour, which belongs to the aḍdâd of the Arabic philologians, i.e. words with contradictory signification, and may denote either white or black (see Redslob, _Die arab_. _Wörter mit entgegengesetzter Bedeutung_, Göttingen 1873, p. 27). Al-jaunâ is especially the setting sun, e.g. lâ âtîhi ḥatta taġîb al-jaunâ, ‘I cannot come to him till the jaunâ sets;’ and the setting sun is well described by a colour-word which, by its faculty of standing for either white or black, answers to the transition from sunshine to darkness.

Footnote 449:

Communicated by Henne Am Rhyn, _Deutsche Volkssagen_ &c., p. 219. no. 427.

Footnote 450:

_Nagyidai Czigányok_. In the original Hungarian:

Most az Éj fölvette tolvajköpönyegét, Eltakará azzal pitykés öltözetét.

Footnote 451:

On _Regina coeli_, see Jablonski, _Opuscula_, II. 54 _et seq_. (ed. Te Water).

Footnote 452:

In Fox Talbot, quoted by Schrader, _Die Höllenfahrt der Istar_, p. 98.

Footnote 453:

_Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1873, XXVII. p. 404.

Footnote 454:

G. Rawlinson, _History of Herodotus_, App. B. I., Essay X. (I. 484).

Footnote 455:

Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, 269, 274.

Footnote 456:

See especially Osiander in the _Zeitsch, d. D. M. G._, 1865, XIX. 242 _et seq._

Footnote 457:

In Yâḳût, IV. 406.

Footnote 458:

The constant epithet ‘holding the seed of bulls’ brings to view the idea that the influence of the moon produces fertility in cattle (Spiegel, _Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_ [in German], III. xxi.). According to Yasht, VII. 5, it is the moon ‘that produces verdure, that produces good things.’ Compare _Catullus_, XXXII (XXXIV) v. 17–20, where the poet apostrophises the Moon—

Tu cursu, Dea, menstruo Metiens iter annuum, Rustica agricolae bonis Tecta frugibus exples.

Footnote 459:

This connexion is also clear in the Hottentot mythology. Heizi Eibib, which means moon, is there the name of the man to whom grave-tumuli are consecrated, and who is addressed in prayer for good sport and numerous herds (Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, II. 324).

Footnote 460:

Max Müller’s view (_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 184), ‘When Jeremiah speaks of the Queen of Heaven, this can only be meant for Astarte or Baaltis,’ is correct only if Baaltis be identified with the Moon. The correctness of this identification, which was first asserted by Philo Byblius, and has been conceded by the older interpreters Grotius and Lyra, and by many modern ones, is very probable; for the name Baaltis stands in the same relation to Baʿal (Sun) as Milkâ to Melekh, Lebhânâ to Lâbhân, and Ashêrâ to Âshêr. Tiele also (_Vergelijkende Geschiedenis_, p. 512) says the same as Müller.

Footnote 461:

Midrâsh Shôchêr Ṭôbh on Ps. XIX. 7.

Footnote 462:

The contrast of Leah’s weak eyes to Rachel’s beauty belongs not to the mythic stage, but to the epic description.

Footnote 463:

There is no reason to separate the word shilhê from the Shaphʿêl shalhî, as Levy does in his _Chald. Wôrterbuch_, II. 481; compare Reggio in the Hebrew journal _Ozar Nechmad_, I. 122.

Footnote 464:

See _Zeitschr. für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, 1869, VI. 237, 252.

Footnote 465:

Rohlfs, _Quer durch Afrika_, I. 204.

Footnote 466:

_Opuscula Arabica_, pp. 16–39.

Footnote 467:

E.g. _Ḥamâsâ_, p. 609, v. 6: _Nâbiġâ_, VI. v. 9.

Footnote 468:

_Ḥamâsâ_, p. 391, v. 2.

Footnote 469:

Commentary on _Ḥamâsâ_, _ibid._

Footnote 470:

The Arabian poet Ibn Mayyâdâ, in a description of the lightning (_Aġânî_, II. 120. 9), says 'it lights up the piled-up cloud, which is like a herd of camels, at the head of which those that long for their home cry out with pain: yuḍîʾu ṣabîran min saḥâbin kaʾannahu * hijânun arannat lil-ḥanîni nawâziʿuh.

Footnote 471:

The ancient Arabs understood that the thunder and lightning were caused by the clouds whence they issued. Many passages might be quoted in support of this, but Lebîd Muʿallaḳâ v. 4, 5, is sufficient. Ḥanna (to sigh, to groan with desire) is therefore equivalent to ‘to thunder,’ e.g. _Aġânî_, XIII. 32. 8. ḳad raʿadat samâʾuhu wa-baraḳat wa-ḥannat warjaḥannat.

Footnote 472:

See W. Wright, _Opuscula Arabica_, p. 20. 10; 21. 7.

Footnote 473:

_Ibid._, p. 29. 2.

Footnote 474:

_Kitâb al-Aġânî_, XIX. 157. 1.

Footnote 475:

Jeremiah XXXI. 15, Matth. II. 18.

Footnote 476:

Compare al-Sherbînî Hezz al-ḳuḥûf, etc., lithographed Alexandria, p. 253. The Arabs also said of the red evening-sky that ‘it wept bloody tears’ (al-Maḳrîzî, _al-Chiṭaṭ_, Bûlâk edition, I. 430).

Footnote 477:

Clemens Alex. _Strom._ V. 571.

Footnote 478:

See Nöldeke’s _Beiträge zur altarab. Poesie_, p. 34.

Footnote 479:

In mythology the clouds are also called udders. See Mannhardt, _German Mythenf._, pp. 176–188; so in Arabic, Ibn Muṭeyr apud Nöldeke l. c.

Footnote 480:

Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳaḳ_, ed. Wüstenfeld, pp. 13, 14.

Footnote 481:

Ibnat al-ʿinab, in the celebrated wine-song of Wâlid b. Yazîd (_Aġânî_, VI. 110. 5). Wine is well known to be called in Hebrew ‘Blood of the grape,’ dam ʿênâbh (_Deut._ XXXII. 14); compare the Persian chôni rûz in Waṣṣâf ed. Hammer, p. 138. 6: shahzâdegân bâ yekdiger chôni rûz chordend.

Footnote 482:

In Siamese luk mei is ‘son of the tree, fruit’ (Steinthal, _Charakteristik_, p. 150); compare Midrâsh rabbâ Leviticus, sect 7, where ‘children of the tree’ are spoken of, châlaḳtâ khâbhôd laʿêṣîm bishebhîl benêhem. The pearl is called by Waṣṣâf, p. 180. 15, zâdei yem ‘son of the sea.’ A curious mythological relationship is found in the Polynesian system; the year, a daughter of the first pair, combined with her own father to produce the months, and the children of the latter are the days (Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 233).

Footnote 483:

Fleischer in the _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1853, VII. 502 note.

Footnote 484:

_Aġânî_, XX. 54. 16.

Footnote 485:

Arabic tradition knows another name besides Zalîchâ for this person. In al-Ṭabarî her name is given as Râʿîl; see Ouseley, _Travels in various Countries of the East_, London 1819, I. 74; also in al-Beyḍâwî’s _Anwâr al-tanzîl_, ed. Fleischer, I. 456–8.

Footnote 486:

_Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._ 1849, III. 200. See above p. 73. _et seq._

Footnote 487:

_Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, pp. 1. _et seq._

Footnote 488:

Weil, _Biblische Legenden der Muselmänner_, p. 39. _Zeitschrift d. D. M. G._, 1861, XV. 86.

Footnote 489:

_Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, Leipzig 1871, I. 36.

Footnote 490:

_Chips_, &c. vol. II., the latter part of ‘Comparative Mythology,’ and _Lectures on the Science of Language_, Second Series, Lecture IX. ‘The Mythology of the Greeks.’—TR.

Footnote 491:

Plutarchi _Fragmenta et Spuria_, ed. Fr. Dübner, in F. Didot’s Collection, Paris 1855, p. 83.

Footnote 492:

_Lettres assyriologiques et épigraphiques_, Paris 1872, II. fifth letter.

Footnote 493:

Müller, _History of Sanskrit Literature_, p. 530; _Chips_, &c., II. 163 _et seq._; Fiske, _Myths_, p. 113.

Footnote 494:

Schoolcraft, _Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes_, 1851, II. 136.

Footnote 495:

See Geiger, _Jüd. Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben_, vol. VIII. p. 285. Breslau 1869.

Footnote 496:

Kuenen (in his _Religion of Israel_, I. 111 in the translation) expresses the opinion that only the degree of mutual relationship between the fathers of tribes was a later idea: that, e.g. the less noble tribes were called sons of Jacob’s slave-girls, and those that were bound together by closer fraternal feelings were regarded as sons of the same mother. Compare now also Zunz, _Gesammelte Schriften_, Berlin 1875, I. 268.

Footnote 497:

There still remain some names whose etymological explanation is difficult, as Reʾûbhên and Shimʿôn. Yissâsekhâr (Issachar) translated literally might be ‘the Day-labourer,’ certainly a fitting designation for the Sun, expressing how he does his day’s work, like a day-labourer. Yet I cannot look upon that as a mythical description, because it would be an unpardonable anachronism to suppose that that primeval age when myths were created would speak of day-labourers, especially after the fashion in which the idea is expressed by the word Yissâ-sekhâr, ‘he takes up his _wages_.’

Footnote 498:

Which according to al-Damîrî, _Ḥayât al-ḥaywân_, Bûlâḳ 1274, II. 219, is used only of the rising sun; we can say ṭalaʿat al-ġazâlâ ‘the gazelle rises,’ but not ġarabat ‘he sets.’ Abû Saʿîd al-Rustamî the poet (in Behâ al-Dîn al-ʿÂmilî, _Keshkûl_, p. 164. 13) carries out the mythological figure still further, using the verb naṭaḥa ‘to butt,’ said of horned beasts. Describing a fine building, he says tanâṭaḥa ḳarna-sh-shamsi min sharafâtihi, that ‘as to splendour it butts in rivalry with the sun’—as if the palace and the sun were knocking their horns together.

Footnote 499:

_Babyl. Tract. Yômâ_, fol. 29. a: ‘As the hind’s horns branch out to every side, so also the light of dawn spreads out to all sides.’

Footnote 500:

_Journal asiatique_, 1861, II. 437.

Footnote 501:

Caussin de Perceval, _Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme_, I. 260.

Footnote 502:

Given in the Appendix to this work.

Footnote 503:

Lenormant, _La Magie chez les Chaldéens_, Paris 1874, p. 140. In the decadence of magic, however, the horns, which are connected with magic, are used even outside the cycle of solar gods; e.g. ‘On voit Bin la tête surmontée de la tiare royale armée de cornes de taureau, les épaules munies de quatre grandes ailes, etc.,’ _ibid._ p. 50. Here the horns are for butting, not to symbolise rays. However, in this particular case of Bin the mythical meaning is not very clear. As he is sometimes called ‘the southern sun over ʿElâm,’ _ibid._ p. 121, the horns in the passage quoted may have something to do with his solar character.

Footnote 504:

_Deorum Concilium_, 10.

Footnote 505:

See Herodotus, II. 42, IV. 181.

Footnote 506:

We will not claim any importance for the fact that in Sanchuniathon’s account of the sacrifice of Isaac the name Jeûd is given instead of Isaac; consequently if Jeûd be identical with the Hebrew Jehûdâ, the fact that Jeûd is here equivalent to Isaac would prove the solar character of Jehûdâ.

Footnote 507:

Angelo de Gubernatis, in his _Zoological Mythology_, is peculiarly indefinite on the mythological significance of this animal; compare Pleyte, _La Religion des Pré-Israelites_, Leyden 1865, p. 151, where much useful information will be found on the worship of the Ass.

Footnote 508:

See Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, pp. 494 and 1163.

Footnote 509:

On the Arabic proper name _Ḥimâr_, Yâḳût, II. 362, may be consulted; cf. Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 4. The Arabic proper name Misḥal is also connected with the Ass; it alludes to the screeching of the wild-ass; see _Tebrîzî’s Scholia to the Ḥamâsâ_, p. 200 penult. Compare _al-Meydânî_, II. 98: akfar min Ḥimâr.

Footnote 510:

_Ḳazwînî_, ed. Wüstenfeld, I. 77, II. 166. I must also just refer to the story of Muṭʿim, as told in Yâḳût, IV. 565, and mention that Muṭʿim ‘he who gives food’ is likewise the name of an ancient Arabian idol. Even Krehl, in his work on the _Preislamite Religion of the Arabs_, p. 61, attempted to explain mythologically the story of Isâf and Nâʾilâ, interpreting the latter name as ‘she who kisses.’

Footnote 511:

Pharez and Zarah in the English Bible, derived through the LXX. from the pausal forms Pâreṣ and Zârach.—TR.

Footnote 512:

And English _Daybreak_.—TR.

Footnote 513:

From Hajnal ‘dawn,’ and hasadás, abstract substantive from root hasad ‘to split, tear open.’—TR.

Footnote 514:

Abû Nuwâs says of the dawn, maftûḳ-ul-adîmi, _Yâḳut_, III. 697. 22.

Footnote 515:

This hymn is applied to Dan, to whom it is quite unsuitable, as Dan has a solar character. We are tempted to conjecture that it originally referred to a non-solar figure, perhaps actually to Levi, whose name is synonymous with nâchâsh ‘serpent.’ This is the more probable, because no separate section of Jacob’s Blessing is devoted to this son, and in the only words relating to him he is coupled with Simeon.

Footnote 516:

See _Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie &c._, 1871, VII. 307.

Footnote 517:

The first chapter of the _Vendidâd_ translated and explained, in Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place_ &c. III. 494 _et seq._

Footnote 518:

As raoidhitem may also signify ‘running’ (root rudh = to flow and to run), a ‘running snake,’ literally the same as nâchâsh bârîach, might be meant.

Footnote 519:

Möller, _Kosmogonie_, p. 193.

Footnote 520:

Max Müller, _Chips_ &c., II. 164; Fiske, _Myths_ &c., p. 113. On the blinding, see p. 109 _et seq._

Footnote 521:

See al-Damîrî, _Ḥayât al-heyvân_, I. 70.

Footnote 522:

See Excursus L.

Footnote 523:

Connected with ġashiya ‘to veil.’

Footnote 524:

See Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 749.

Footnote 525:

Max Müller, _Chips_ &c., II. 68.

Footnote 526:

Arsala achâhu Sheybûb taḥt al-leyl, _ʿAntar_, VI. 102. 9.

Footnote 527:

_Ḥamâsâ_, p. 566. v. 2.

Footnote 528:

Libâsan, compare Sûr. VII. v. 52; XIII. v. 3; yuġshî-l-leyla-n-nahâra.

Footnote 529:

In _Yâḳût_, I. 24. 2.

Footnote 530:

Ḥarîrî, p. 162, 2nd ed.; compare the Commentary, in which particular stress is laid on the act of covering up: liʾannahu yuġaṭṭî mâ fîhî. Compare al-Meydânî, II. 112. 23: al-leyl yuwârî ḥaḍanan.

Footnote 531:

Eur. _Ion_, v. 1150; it is also called ποικίλον ἔνδυμα ἔχουσα, and in Aeschylus, _Prom._ v. 24 ποικίλειμων νύξ, from the gay robe of stars.

Footnote 532:

Compare _King Richard II._, III. 2. ‘The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs.’

Footnote 533:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, III. 28. 24.

Footnote 534:

I quote also a passage from the Uigur language: ‘The creation tore its black shirt,’ _i.e._ the day has dawned: Vámbéry, _Kudatku Bilik_, p. 218; compare p. 70, ‘I have put off the cloak of darkness;’ p. 219, ‘The daughter of the west spreads out her carpet.’

Footnote 535:

Max Müller, _Chips_, &c., II. 83. Schwartz, _Ursprung d. Mythologie_, p. 245.

Footnote 536:

al-Beyḍâwî’s Commentary on the _Ḳorân_, I. 19. 21 _et seq._ Abû-l-Baḳâ, _Kulliât_, p. 305.

Footnote 537:

See Excursus G.

Footnote 538:

Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 322.

Footnote 539:

_The Poetical Works_ of Behâ-ed-Dîn Zoheir of Egypt. By E.H. Palmer, Cambridge 1876, I. 108. 7. It is impossible to quote this edition without an expression of admiration for the perfection to which Arabic typography has been brought in England in this magnificent Oriental work, the production of which redounds to the imperishable credit of the University of Cambridge. It may be pronounced one of the most beautiful Oriental books that have ever been printed in Europe; and the learning of the editor worthily rivals the technical get-up of the creations of the soul of one of the most tasteful poets of Islâm, the study of which will contribute not a little to save the honour of the poetry of the Arabs. Here first we make the acquaintance of a poet who gives us something better than monotonous descriptions of camels and deserts, and may even be regarded as superior in charm to al-Mutanabbî.

Footnote 540:

_Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachgelehrsamkeit bei den Arabern_, no. 1, in the _Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften_, Vienna 1871, Jan. p. 222 _et seq._; or in the reprint p. 18 _et seq._

Footnote 541:

Wallin’s articles in the _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1851, V. 17; but see above p. 43.

Footnote 542:

See Vatke, _Biblische Theologie_, p. 327, and Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 711, where importance is attached to this.

Footnote 543:

The conception of Cherubim penetrated even into Mohammedan regions, e.g. Ḥâfiẓ, ed. Rosenzweig, III. 526 _penult._, chalweti kerrûbiân ʿâlem-i-ḳuds.

Footnote 544:

_Ueber die südarabische Sage_, Leipzig 1866 p. 27.

Footnote 545:

See Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 697.

Footnote 546:

See Dillmann, in Schenkel’s _Bibellexikon_, I. 511.

Footnote 547:

_Ibid._, V. 284.