* Mot, the clay formed by the corruption of earth and water, is probably a Phoenician form of a word which means _water_ in the Semitic languages. Cf. the Egyptian theory, according to which the clay, heated by the sun, was supposed to have given birth to animated beings; this same clay modelled by Khnumu into the form of an egg was supposed to have produced the heavens and the earth. A scholar of the Roman epoch, Philo of Byblos, using as a basis some old documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been classified by Sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how the world was brought out of Chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn of civilization in Phoenicia and the legendary period in its history. No doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved their substance more or less faithfully. Beneath the veneer of abstraction with which the Greek tongue and mind have overlaid the fragment thus quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas which is to be met with in most Oriental theologies, whether Egyptian or Babylonian. At first we have a black mysterious Chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the primordial Nu or Apsu; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the Nile under the hand? of Khnumu; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the Lakhmu, the Anshar, and the Illinu of Chaldaean speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings. [Illustration: 246.jpg] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet des Medailles_. The Phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the Mediterranean, with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of Chaos which differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. No sooner had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order. It was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its descent from the winds.