Mazzochi follows the oriental theory, but does not venture to determine from what eastern region the Etruscans emigrated. He merely affirms, that they spread from the east, under which term he includes regions very remote from each other—Assyria, Armenia, Canaan, and Egypt(24). He also thinks that they came directly from the east, without having previously passed through Lydia or Arcadia: For, if they had, the monuments of these latter countries would exhibit (which they do not) still stronger remains of oriental antiquity than those of the Etruscans. This descent Mazzochi attempts to confirm by the most fanciful derivations of words and proper names of the Etruscan nation from the eastern languages, especially from the Hebrew and Syriac. Thus one of the most extensive plains in Italy, and the spot where, in all probability, the oriental colony first landed, is near the æstuary of the Po. This plain they naturally called Paddan, one of the names of the level Mesopotamia, and the appellation of the district soon came to be transferred to the river Padus or Po, by which it was bounded. It occurred to the author, however, that the Eridanus was the more ancient name of the Po; but this only furnishes him with a new argument. Eraz, it seems, signifies in Hebrew, a cedar, or any sort of resinous tree, and the orientals, finding a number of trees of this nature on the banks of the Po, and Z being a convertible letter with D, they could not fail to call the river, near which they grew in such abundance, the Eridanus(25). Bonarota has deduced the origin of the Etruscans from Egypt—a theory which has chiefly been grounded on the resemblance of the remains of their arts with the monuments of the ancient Egyptians(26). Maffei brings them directly from Canaan, and supposes them to have been the race expelled from that region by the Moabites, or children of Lot. The river Arnon, (whence Arno,) flowed not far from that part of Canaan, where Lot and Abram first sojourned; one of its districts was called Etroth, (whence Etruria); and on the banks of the Arnon stood the city Ar, a syllable which is a frequent compound in Etruscan appellatives. The Etruscans erected their places of worship on hills or high places—they formed corporeal images of their divine beings like the idolatrous race from whom they sprung—but above all, their divinations and profession of augury, identified them with those original inhabitants of Canaan, of whom it is said, “that they hearkened unto observers of times and unto diviners”(27).