v. 2, he 'called their name Adam'), you are the ancestry of the world,

and you are created the best of Armaîti (the Earth) by me." (West's translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various reading) it is actually translated Armaith,--Armaîti's very name. We may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar Khayyám, "Man is the whole creation's summary."

Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not, for their meaning is different, Adima meaning "the first," and Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the great Woman--"the Mother of all living." [14] Adamah, according to Sale, is a Persian word meaning "red earth," and in Hebrew also it connotes redness. Armaîti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness from her union with Âtar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51, 52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines three senses--a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs (viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, "the habitable part of his earth"; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, "the highest part (or sum, or best) of the dust of the earth." The "delight" in which Wisdom dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis, and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in