Saturn is not so old as his identity with the sun-god, as Sirius (Sôthis), because the sun has the greatest power when it is in Sirius.” Elsewhere the same writer says that “the Oriento-Egyptian conception of Typhon-Set was that of a drying-up parching heat. Set is considered as the sun-god when he has reached his zenith, the god of the summer sun.” The solar[224] character of the serpent-god appears therefore to be placed beyond doubt. But what was the relation in which he was supposed to stand to the human race? Bunsen, to whose labours I am so much indebted, remarks that Seth “appears gradually among the Semites as the 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.” Seth is thus the divine ancestor of the Semites, a character in which, but in relation to other races, the solar deities generally agree with him. The kings and priests of ancient peoples claimed this divine origin, and “children of the sun” was the title of the members of the sacred caste. When the actual ancestral character of the deity is hidden he is regarded as “the father of his people” and their divine benefactor. He is the introducer of agriculture, the inventor of arts and sciences, and the civiliser of mankind; “characteristics,” says Faber, “which every nation ascribed to the first of their gods or the oldest of their kings.” This was true of Thoth, Saturn, and other analogous deities, and the Adam of Hebrew tradition was the father of agriculture, as his representative Noah was the introducer of the vine.