Another Syrian people, often occurring upon the Egyptian monuments, is the Shairetana, whom Layard supposes to be the Sharutinians near modern Antioch. They inhabited a country upon a river and a lake or sea. Their armour was a close-fitting cuirass of imbricated metal plates, worn over a short dress and girt at the waist; the helmet had side horns, and its upper dome was surmounted by a shaft-and-ball crest. Their weapons were javelins, long spears, and pointed Swords. The Tokkari, their neighbours, also carried for offence spears and large pointed knives or straight Swords. The Rebo had bows and long straight Swords with very sharp points. The same is the case with Ru-tennu or Rot-n-n, who often pass in review upon the monuments. They appear to have contained two divisions: the Ru-tennu-hir (upper Ru-tennu) were apparently the peoples of Cœlesyria, while the Ruthens or Luthens are mentioned in conjunction with Neniee (Nineveh), Shinar (Singar), Babel, and other places in Eastern Naharayn (Mesopotamia). [Heading: _THE HARPE OF PERSEUS._] We have no knowledge of the Phœnician Sword except that supplied to us by the legend of the enigmatical Egypto-Argive hero, Perseus. According to Herodotus (ii. 91), his quadrangular fane was at Panopolis-Chemmis in the Theban nome: here his sandal, two cubits long, was shown to devotees; and the land prospered whenever he appeared, as is the case when it sees El-Khizr, the Green Prophet of El-Islam. The Greeks, whom we need not credit, made him the son of Jupiter by the ‘Acrisian maid’ (Danaë); and the Persians,[572] according to the Greeks, declared his son Perses to be the _heros eponymus_ of their country, and the ancestor of their Hakhmanish or Achæmenian kings. His chief exploits were two. At Spanish Tartessus or in Libya (Herod. ii. 91) he slew, with the aid of a ‘magic mirror’ given to him by Neith-Athene, the gorgon Medusa, that old Typhonian head, from whose neck sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor.[573] At Phœnician Joppa (Jaffa)[574] he slaughtered the sea-monster (κῆτος) and saved ‘Andromeda,’ who is suspiciously like ‘Anat.’ In both these feats Perseus used a celestial weapon, the Harpé of Cronos, which Zeus had wielded in his duel with Typhon. The giant or bad-god had torn it from the grip of the good-god, whom he presently imprisoned in a cave; and it was not recovered till the captive was liberated by Thut-Hermes. The Greeks call this Sword Ἅρπη (Harpé),[575] and the name is evidently the Phœnician Hereba and the Hebrew Chereb; whilst its description, δρέπανον ὀξὺ (_falx acuta_, sharp sickle), identifies it with the Khopsh-blade of Egypt. Perseus performed his two exploits as Hercules slew the Lernæan hydra; and Mercury cut off the head of Argus (_falcato ense_), using the _harpen Cyllenida_.[576]