But what was the character of the primitive Semitic deity? Bunsen seems to think that Plutarch in one passage alludes to the identity of Typhon (Seth) and Osiris.[133] This is a remarkable idea, and yet curiously enough Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that Typhon-Seth may have been derived from the pigmy Pthath-Sokari-Osiris,[134] who was clearly only another form of Osiris himself. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus, the son of Osiris, is declared to be at the same time Set, “by the distinction made between them by Thoth.”[135] However that may be, the Phallic origin of Seth can be shown from other data. Thus it appears that the word _Set_ means, in Hebrew as in Egyptian, pillar, and, in a general sense, the erect, elevated, high.[136] Moreover, in a passage of the Book of the Dead, Set, according to Bunsen, is called _Tet_, a fact which intimates that Thoth inherited many of the attributes of Set.[137] They were, however, in some sense the same deities, it being through Thoth that Set was identified with Horus. We have here an explanation of the statement that Tet, the Phœnician _Taaut_, was the snake-god, Esmun-Esculapius, the serpent being the symbol of Tet, as we have seen it to have been that of Seth also. In this we have a means of identifying the Semitic deity Seth with the Saturn of related deities of other peoples. Ewald says that “the common name for God, _Eloah_, among the Hebrews, as among all the Semites, goes back into the earliest times.”[138] Bryant goes further, and declares that El was originally the name of the supreme deity among all the nations of the East.[139] This idea is confirmed, so far as Chaldea is concerned, by later researches, which show that Il or El was at the head of the Babylonian Pantheon. With this deity must be identified the Il or Ilus of the Phœnicians, who was born the same as Cronus, who, again, was none other than the primeval Saturn, whose worship appears to have been at one period almost universal among European and Asiatic peoples. Saturn and El were thus the same deity, the latter, like the Semitic Seth, being, as is well known, symbolised by the serpent.[140] A direct point of contact between Seth and Saturn is found in the Hebrew idol _Kiyun_ mentioned by Amos, the planet Saturn being still called _Kevan_ by Eastern peoples. This idol was represented in the form of a pillar, the primeval symbol of deity, which was common undoubtedly to all the gods here mentioned.[141] These symbolical pillars were called _betyli_ or _betulia_. Sometimes also the column was called _Abaddir_, which, strangely enough, Bryant identifies with the serpent-god.[142] There can be no doubt that both the pillar and the serpent were associated with many of the sun-gods of antiquity.