The claim put forward was not based only on the resemblance in sound of “Assur” and “Ahura,” but was in the first place founded on the virtual identity of the emblems of Assur and Ahura Mazda. For the _origin_ of these emblems (referring as it was suggested they did to the Zodiacal constellation Sagittarius) a date as high as 4,000 B.C. was, on astronomic grounds, assumed, and it was pointed out that at that date there was no evidence of the existence of the Assyrian nation as a nation, nor any trace of a Semitic worship of the god Assur; whereas, on the other hand, as early as 3,800 B.C. there is evidence that a powerful Aryan race--the Manda--rivalled the power, and threatened the Semitic rule of Sargon of Agane. The opinion that the symbol of Ahura Mazda, and of Assur, was of ancient Aryan origin, naturally suggested the further thought that the _name_ Assur, so closely resembling the earlier Indo-Iranian form Asura, of the Iranian Ahura, had, together with the emblem of the god, been borrowed from the Aryan ancestors of the Medo-Persians by the Semitic settlers who, early in the second millennium B.C., established themselves to the north of Babylonia. It may here be pointed out that no very certain Semitic derivation at present holds the field which the proposed Aryan derivation would occupy. According to some scholars it comes from a word signifying “a well-watered plain.” According to Professor Hommel, the name Assur is derived from a word which originally meant “the heavenly host.” Professor Hommel, quoting as his authority the opinions of the Sanscrit scholar Oldenburg, and reinforcing Oldenburg’s opinions by arguments from other sources, further maintains the high probability of the Median god Ahura Mazda having been the representative of the Vedic Varuna, and also that Varuna was the moon. Vedic scholars are divided in opinion as to what physical phenomenon is represented by Varuna. He is very generally supposed to personify “the vast extent of the encompassing sky,” some say especially the sky at night-time--others claim him as a solar divinity, whilst Oldenburg, as we have seen, supposes him to be the moon. It is not to the question, however, what phenomenon Varuna represented, but to that of the probability or improbability of his original identity with the Median Ahura Mazda, that I would now draw attention. It is said that “the parallel in character, though not in name, of the god Varuna is Ahura Mazda, the Wise Spirit.” But a variety of considerations may lead us to entertain the possibility of a Vedic god other than Varuna being the parallel in character and in _epithet_ of Ahura Mazda; a parallel which is also still more clearly to be recognized if we adopt the view, above contended for, of the identity of Assur, the _archer_ god of Assyria, with Ahura Mazda.