cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and were filled with food and were happy and saw no evil; whereas ever since we have ceased to burn incense to the _Queen of Heaven_ and pour libations to her, we have wanted everything, and been consumed by sword and famine. And when we were burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring libations to her, was it _without our men_ that we made cakes for her, to receive her image, and poured libations to her?’ (Jer. XLIV. 16–19). This reply leads us to infer that the moon-worship in Judah was specially attractive to the women and allowed by the men, and was not a mere secondary religious act, but a prominent worship of the first rank; yet a worship which, considering the prevailingly solar character of the religion of an agricultural people, was then kept up chiefly by the women as the relic of an ancient nomadic age. What was the antiquity of this lunar worship among the Hebrews, is testified (as has long been known) by the part played by Mount Sinai in the history of Hebrew religion. For this geographical name is doubtless related to _Sin_, one of the Semitic names of the moon. The mountain must in ancient times have been consecrated to the Moon.[456] The beginning of the Hebrew religion, which, as we shall see, was connected with the phenomena of the night-sky, germinated first during the residence in Egypt on the foundation of an ancient myth. The recollection of this occasioned them to call the part of Egypt which they had long inhabited ereṣ Sînîm ‘Moonland’ (Is. XLIX. 12). Obviously the lunar worship of Nomads stands in connexion with the prominent position occupied by the figures of the night-sky in their mythology. When, through that psychological process which results in the decay of the life of the myth and the rise of a religious view of the world, the mythic elements become religion, then the Moon is not believed to possess those deleterious qualities of which the later legends of the American nations are full, but is rather regarded as the source of blessing and success. The Hebrews called the most fruitful place in their new country, the ‘City of the Palms,’ formerly delightful, though now a very cheerless hole, by a name denoting _Moon-city_—Yerêchô (Jericho). An analogous system of nomenclature is mentioned by Ḥamzâ of Iṣpahân, a Persian who wrote in Arabic, who says in his _Kitâb al-muwâzanâ_ that, because the moon is the cause of an abundant supply of water and of rain, the names of the most fruitful places in Persia are compounded with the word _mâh_ ‘moon:’ e.g. Mâhidînâr, Mâhishereryârân, Mâhikârân, Mâhiharûm &c.[457] For, in the opinion of the Iranians the growth of plants depends on the influence of the moon.[458] The Arabic language still shows clearly the mythical connexion between the moon and good pasture,[459] in the fact that the same word, which as a noun, al-ḳamar, signifies moon, as a verb, ḳamara, expresses the notion _multus fuit_ (de aqua et pabulo), and