of the three names Shem, Ham and Japheth among the Hebrews differs only by age and more primitive form from that of Zervan, Titan, and Japetosthe. Other scattered traces of the sacred traditions of the primitive nation also lead us back to those northern regions. We met with Enoch at Iconium on Taurus, under the name of Annakos (p. 266); and the well-known coins of the neighbouring Apamea Kibotos, with the Ark and other signs of the Flood, such as the name N,' though dating only from the time of the Cæsars and the first half of the third century after Christ, can hardly have borrowed these signs exclusively from the Old Testament, since they represent one pair only as rescued, and not, like the Old Testament, the Patriarch's sons and sons' wives as well. The tradition of the Flood in the Book of Origins (Gen. viii. 4) points definitely to Ararat; there, according to this mythology, was the hallowed starting-point and centre of all the nations, but especially of that group of them which dwelt nearest to it, and called themselves Shem. And although the conception of the four Rivers of Paradise which the Fourth Narrator introduces (Gen ii. 10-14), seems to have its ultimate source in the remotest east, and after many transformations to have reached Palestine only in the time of the Kings, yet even in its nally been given by the nation which called itself Shem to the entire south, and subsequently been restricted to Egypt as the most important southern kingdom. See below, on Edom. in Canaan, we should here stand on firmer, the name in question may have origiground. Ancient writers speak also of a certain Chôm or Chôn and Chons, also Sêm, i.e. O or X, as the Egyptian Herakles (Jablonskii Opuscula ed. te Water, ii. p. 195 sq.; R. Rochette in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xvii. 2, p. 324 sq.; compare nuopov Kрaтηs, Eratosthenes in Syncellus i. p. 205). More important to the present subject is the fact that the Egyptians called their own country Xnuía, or in another dialect, Kame X&H, i.e. black, as was noticed by Plutarch, De Is. et Osir. xxxiii. But by the Hebrews, especially in the earliest times, the term Ham was not applied to Egypt exclusively; and it only begins to be poetically so called in some of the latest of the Psalms (lxxviii., cv., cvi.) If however, as Eupolemus p. 400 says, the name Ham was interchangeable with Asbolos (i.e. soot), this must refer to the dark complexion of the Egyptians, who were in Greek also designated μeλáyXpoes and μexaμrodes (see the commentators on Apollod. Bibl. ii. 1, 4). As the Egyptian meaning black is thus ultimately connected with that of the Hebrew D. Eckhel, Doctrina Nummorum, vol. iii. P. 132-139, treats this subject in detail, and shows a third letter to be wanting after No. Undoubtedly the diffusion of the LXX. and the old Testament histories in that age contributed much to bring such local traditions to light: one decisive instance of this, from about this time, is found in the notice in the Sibylline Books, i. 268 sq. From Moses of Chorene, Geographia, xliii. we learn how constantly the Ark was located in Phrygia. From hence may probably have sprung Herodotus' well-known story of the origin of mankind in Phrygia. 2 The origin of the story of Paradise, Gen. ii. 5 sq., is a question reserved for another place; but here I must observe that I do not believe the original form of that description of Paradise will be ever fully understood, or the four rivers be properly interpreted, till some of the names of rivers are allowed to have been changed during the migration of the present form it clearly shows us the locality in which the Hebrews from early reminiscences imagined their Eden, a pure Semitic word. For as the Hebrews could only appropriate this tradition by making the Tigris and the Euphrates two of the rivers of Paradise, it is evident that Eden was supposed to have lain at the very sources of these streams, in the sacred neighbourhood of Ararat. It has been customary in Germany during the last fifty years to call Semitic all the nations who spoke a language kindred with the Hebrew, and this usage may be maintained, in default of a better. But in the language of antiquity the Semites included only a portion of these nations; and although nations such as the Phoenicians, Philistines, &c., related in speech, but otherwise alien to the ancient Semites may probably at an incalculably remote period have issued from the same northern birthplace, the Hebrews in Palestine no longer felt themselves akin, but entirely foreign to them. Thus it is certain that the Hebrews belonged to quite another order of nations, and kept up a lively remembrance of the north as the land of their descent.1 2. As the oldest reminiscences of the people refer to a mother land whose sanctuary was very different from that which they developed for themselves in Palestine, so also we find traces of a remembrance of the migration which brought them gradually nearer to the country which afterwards became their holy land. It is certainly no unimportant historical fact that the Hebrew nation does not claim an extreme antiquity. Their ancestor Eber descends from Shem through Arphaxad (for Canaan and Salah may be passed by, see p. 264). Now Arphaxad is without doubt the most northern country of Assyria, on the southern border of Armenia, which Ptolemy 2 alone among all the Greek and Roman authors mentions under the corresponding name of Arrapachitis, and describes, so insignificant had this once important and powerful land become. There lies however in the name itself a farther witness as to its situation and inhabitants; Arphaxad appears to denote Stronghold of the Chaldeans,' 3 and was perhaps at first used of the chief city legend. In my opinion the Pison and the Gihon are the Indus and the Ganges; to these were originally added two others belonging to the same region; but when the legend passed to the Hebrews in Palestine, the latter were exchanged for the familiar Tigris and Euphrates. It seems superfluous after these explanations to refute in detail the opinions of others on Noah's three sons and espe cially Shem; some of the most recent are as well as ارت of the country; and Ur of the Chaldees, whence according to the very ancient author of Gen. xi. 28, 31 Abraham journeyed to Palestine, is probably only the name used of the same country in the time of that writer.' The Chaldeans, in name originally identical with the nation in this day called the Kurds, were even at a very early period widely scattered,' as the Kurds are now; 3 but we have every reason to believe their original seat to be the mountain country called Arrapachitis. After the seventh century before Christ, indeed, a new non-Semitic nation -essentially the same that has ever since retained the name Kurds-appears under this name. This is explained by the hypothesis that a northern people who had conquered the land gradually assumed its ancient name, as the Saxons beyond the sea appropriated the name of Britons. signifies to bind, to make fast. Now as 1 That Ur-Chasdim was not regarded as a city, but as a country, is shown by the whole meaning and context of the passage in Gen. xi. 28 sq., and the LXX. are correct in rendering it by xúpa Tv Xandalwv. A Zendic origin for the word can hardly be sought in an age preceding the seventh and eighth centuries. But اری تحرى تاری a comparison with gives us at once the meaning, residence,' -3 a name given by Abdolhakam to the Egyptian Nomes). Ur as a city has however been sought for in many places, both in ancient and modern times: Jose Just now, phus (Ant. i. 6. 5) says that the grave of 2 As is proved by the reception of one See Rödiger in the Zeitschrift für das That Eber is called a son of this Arphaxad means simply that the Hebrews remembered that they had in their earliest ages lived in this land, and from thence had journeyed to the south. Beyond this remembrance they manifestly retained nothing; but that their small nation had once dwelt in that great home of their race was still clear to them. Nothing is hereby really determined respecting the origin and connection of this name, HEBREW, which fills so eminent a place in history; we are at liberty to supply the void as we best can. It would be entirely erroneous to assume that the name was given to them only by foreigners after they had passed over the Euphrates, and that it originally signified the people of the farther side, that is, who had come from the farther side. This idea can hardly lie even in the name;' and while there is nothing to show that the name emanated from strangers, nothing is more manifest than that the nation called themselves by it and had done so as long as memory could reach; indeed this is the only one of their names that appears to have been current in the earliest times. The history of this name shows that it must have been most frequently used in the ancient times, before that branch of the Hebrews which took the name of Israel became dominant, but that after the time of the Kings it entirely disappeared from ordinary speech,2 and was only revived in the period immediately before Christ, like many other names of the primeval times, through the prevalence of a learned mode of regarding antiquity, when it came afresh into esteem through the reverence then felt for Abraham.3 Of the three great epochs into which the history of this nation As the region beyond the Euphrates is always called and never y simply, we should have to assume an abbreviation found nowhere else, and devoid of intrinsic probability. The LXX. in translating Gen. xiv. 13 by 8 TEрárns may indeed have had some such idea. The sense of any such designation is however shown to be absolutely uncertain by the Fathers of the Church, who know not what to make of it; as we see from Origen on Numb. xxiv. 24, Matt. xiv. 22. See also Gött. Gel. Anz. 1837, p. 959, sq. The doubts which in 1826 I threw out in my Kritische Grammatik against this derivation, were only too well founded, though at the time misunderstood by many. 2 This was likewise noticed in my Kritische Grammatik of 1826, but it can be now defined more exactly. The name Hebrew is found in the ancient fragment 3 As we find for instance in the New Testament; John i. 9 is a mere imitation from Gen. xl. From such late writers as these is derived the modern designation of the language of Canaan as Hebrew, falls, the name Hebrew strictly denotes the earliest, in which Israel with great toil struggled out as an independent nation from amid the crowd of kindred and alien peoples. In the second epoch, in which after the establishment of the kingly rule its native power reached the mightiest development, its name Israel became as sublime and glorious as the nation itself, and supplanted the older more general name. And as no notable period need want for a suitable sign and name, the third and last epoch of the history is distinguished by the name Jew, together with a resuscitation of the old name Hebrew. In like manner, in the sphere of religion these three epochs, which embrace the whole history, are distinguished by a change in the mode of speaking the Divine name Jahve (Jahve alone, Jahve Sabaoth, Jahve suppressed); for thus great national changes and revolutions generally leave their mark on words and names in daily use. Thus then the national name Hebrew, even more than the Divine name Jahve, reaches up into the earliest times; and the people, seeing in it nothing less than the token of their own origin, called their progenitor Eber. But since Eber (as before observed) was conceived only as one son of Arphaxad, we are entitled to ask further whether these Hebrews, who could have inhabited but a small portion of the ancient land of the Chaldeans, had not a connection with any more distant region. And here the name of the Iberians, who dwelt somewhat farther to the north, forces itself upon us involuntarily, so that we can hardly help thinking of some connection with them. What language among the hundreds spoken in that medley of races in the Caucasus that of the Iberians was, it is not possible for us to unriddle from the short description which Strabo gives of them;2 but there is nothing to oppose the possibility that they and their language were originally of the Semitic stock. Up to this great parting of the nations we should then be enabled to trace back the stream of their national life to its source, though of the primary signification of their name it is as difficult to speak as of the |