On Assyrian ground also we discover the idea of the _whiteness_ of the sun, expressed, not indeed by a word directly signifying a colour, but yet by an epithet which is undoubtedly founded upon this idea. In the lyrical poem, called by Schrader ‘The Assyrian Royal Psalm’ (line 29), a land with a _silver sky_,[444] i.e. with a bright shining sunny sky, is desired for the king. So here the bright sunny sky is represented as of silver colour. On the other hand, Ḥomar^m, the name of a Himyarite god,[445] has perhaps a solar meaning, equivalent to the Arabic aḥmar ‘Red;’ at all events, the fancy that he may be a sort of Bacchus (chamr ‘wine’) sounds improbable. In Hebrew literature we find no direct indications of the colours which were associated with the sun: an indirect indication is afforded by the passage in Is. XXIV. 23, where it is said that ‘the sun grows pale and the moon red.’[446] In the Talmûd literature, however, we find an incidental discussion of the colour of the sun; to which one of the Excursus is devoted.[447] I have paused long on the ideas held of the Sun with reference to colour, longer than is consistent with the symmetry of my book, and have especially brought up many examples from the Arabic language, celebrated for its wealth of synonyms and epithets—all with the object of giving probability to my ideas on the mythical character of Esau or Edom and Laban, Jacob’s two hostile kinsmen. We have seen that the sun is called _white_ quite as frequently as _red_;[448] now is it not certain beyond a doubt that the two foes of Jacob the Night-sky, namely Edom the red and Laban the white, are only names for the Sun, formed by the Hebrew myth on the ground of the sun’s colour? The war of darkness and the stormy sky against the red or white sunny sky is described in the rich language of Mythology, which has devoted such multifarious appellations to this struggle, as a strife of one who follows on the heel of his brother, against the white and the red. Here we will return to a point which was anticipated in the Third Section of this chapter; I mean the fact that the mythic feature which, with other solar characteristics, has fastened itself on the description of David, a perfectly historical person, that he was admônî ‘reddish,’ belongs to the same group of mythic ideas. It is a bit of solar myth: ‘He is red, and of excellent sight and good eyes’ (1 Sam. XVI. 12).