“This wonderful people were the descendants of Chus; and called Cuthites and Cuseans. They stood their ground at the general migration of families, but were at last scattered over the face of the earth. They were the first apostates from the truth, yet great in worldly wisdom. They introduced, wherever they came, many useful arts, and were looked up to as a superior order of beings. They were joined in their expeditions by other nations; especially by the collateral branches of their family; the Mizraim, Caphtorim, and the sons of Canaän. These were all of the line of Ham, who was held by his posterity in the highest veneration. They called him Amon; and having in process of time raised him to a divinity, they worshipped him as the Sun; and from this worship they were called Amonians. Under this denomination are included all of this family; whether they were Ægyptians or Syrians, of Phœnicia or of Canaän. They were a people who carefully preserved memorials of their ancestors, and of those great events which had preceded their dispersion. These were described in hieroglyphics on pillars and obelisks. “The deity whom they originally worshipped was the Sun; but they soon conferred his titles upon some other of their ancestors; whence arose a mixed worship. Chus was one of these; and the idolatry began among his sons. The same was practised by the Ægyptians; but this nation made many subtile distinctions; and supposing that there were certain emanations of divinity, they affected to particularize each by some title, and to worship the deity by his attributes. This gave rise to a multiplicity of gods. The Grecians, who received their religion from Ægypt and the East, misapplied the terms which they had received, and made a god out of every title.” _Preface to the Analysis of Ancient Mythology._ FOOTNOTES [18] We know from Homer (Il. vi.) that when Prætus sent Bellerophon to the king of Lycia he gave him, not a written letter, but σηματα λυγρα, _mournful signs_; (probably like the picture-writing of the Mexicans:) writing could not be common till many centuries afterwards, since the first written laws were given in Greece only six centuries B. C. (Herod. lib. ii. Strab. lib. vi.) DR. GILLIES. [19] “The Trœzenian histories,” observes Ælian, book xi. ch. 2, “relate that the poems of Oræbantius, a native of Trœzene, were in existence before Homer; and I know they affirm that Dares the Phrygian, whose Iliad is even now extant, lived before Homer’s time. Melisander, the Milesian, likewise, composed the battle of the Lapithæ and the Centaurs.” [20] Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, tom. i. Homer represents father Oceanus as the generator of all things: and the Chaos of Hesiod is merely the watery element. [21] So Orpheus: NIGHT, source of all things, whom we VENUS name. Night and Chaos, or the aqueous mass, seem reciprocally considered as the source of nature. [22] La Mythologie, ou la Fable expliquée par l’Histoire.