Ammon is by others derived from Ham, the son of Noah, who first peopled Egypt and Lybia, after the flood; and, when idolatry began to gain ground soon after this period, became the chief deity of those two countries, in which his descendants continued. A temple, it is said, was built to his honour, in the midst of the sandy deserts of Lybia, upon a spot of good ground, about two leagues broad, which formed a kind of island or oasis in a sea of sand. He was esteemed the Zeus of Greece, and the Jupiter of Latium, as well as the Ammon of the Egyptians. In process of time, these two names were joined; and he was called Jupiter Ammon. For this reason the city of Ammon, No-ammon, or the city of Ham, was called by the Greeks Diospolis, or the city of Jupiter. Plutarch says, that of all the Egyptian deities which seemed to have any correspondence with the Zeus of Greece, Amon or Ammon was the most peculiar and appropriate. From Egypt his name and worship were brought into Greece; as indeed were almost all the names of all the deities that were there worshipped. Jupiter Ammon, or the Egyptian Jupiter, was usually represented under the figure of a ram; though in some medals he appears of a human shape, having only two ram’s horns growing out beneath his ears. The Egyptians, says Proclus, in the Timæus of Plato, had a singular veneration for the ram, because the image of Ammon bore its head, and because this first sign of the zodiac was the presage of the fruits of the earth. Eusebius adds, that this symbol marked the conjunction of the sun and moon in the sign of the ram. 2. AMMON, or BEN-AMMI, the son of Lot, by his youngest daughter, Gen. xix, 38. He was the father of the Ammonites, and dwelt on the east side of the Dead Sea, in the mountains of Gilead. AMMONIANS, the disciples of Ammonius Saccas, of the Alexandrian school. His character was so equivocal, that it is disputed whether he was a Heathen or a Christian. Mr. Milner calls him “a Pagan Christian,” who imagined “that all religions, vulgar and philosophical, Grecian and barbarous, Jewish and Gentile, meant the same thing in substance. He undertook, by allegorizing and subtilizing various fables and systems, to make up a coalition of all sects and religions; and from his labours, continued by his disciples,--some of whose works still remain,--his followers were taught to look on Jew, philosopher, vulgar, Pagan, and Christian, as all of the same creed,” and worshippers of the same God, whether denominated “Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.”