background of their religious consciousness;” and not merely was he “the primitive god of Northern Egypt and Palestine,” but his genealogy as “the Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man), must be considered as originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim, Adam’s father.”[124] That Seth _had_ some special connection with the Hebrews is proved, among other things, by the peculiar position occupied in their religious system by the _ass_—the first-born of which alone of all animals was allowed to be redeemed[125]—and the _red heifer_, whose ashes were to be reserved as a “water of separation” for purification from sin.[126] Both of these animals were in Egypt sacred to Seth (Typhon), the ass being his symbol, and red oxen being at one time sacrificed to him, although at a later date objects of a red colour were disliked, owing to their association with the dreaded Typhon.[127] That we have a reference to this deity in the name of the Hebrew lawgiver is very probable. No satisfactory derivation of this name, Moses, Môsheh (Heb.), has yet been given. Its original form was probably _Am-a-ses_ or _Am-sesa_,[128] which might become to the Hebrews Om-ses or Mo-ses, meaning only _the_ (god) Ses, _i.e._, Set or Seth.[129] On this hypothesis we may have preserved, in the first book of Moses (so-called), some of the traditional history said to have been contained in the sacred books of the Egyptian Thoth, and of the records engraved on the pillars of Seth. It is somewhat remarkable that, according to a statement of Diodorus, when Antiochus Epiphanes entered the temple at Jerusalem, he found in the Holy of Holies a stone figure of Moses, represented as a man with a long beard, mounted on an ass, and having a book in his hand.[130] The Egyptian Mythus of Typhon actually said that Set fled from Egypt riding on a grey ass.[131] It is strange, to say the least, that Moses should not have been allowed to enter the promised land, and that he should be so seldom referred to by later writers until long after the reign of David,[132] and above all that the name given to his successor was Joshua—_i.e._, _Saviour_. It is worthy of notice that “Nun,” the name of the father of Joshua, is the Semitic word for _fish_, the Phallic character of the fish in Chaldean mythology being undoubted. _Nin_, the planet Saturn, was the fish-god of Berosus, and, as may possibly be shown, he is really the same as the Assyrian national deity _Asshur_, whose name and office have a curious resemblance to those of the Hebrew leader, _Joshua_.