15 



descended from Magog, the son of Japhet the son of Noah, and though 

 the inspired historian of the Jews did not think it necessary to name 

 any of the sons of Magog, yet Josephus most satisfactorily supports 

 the tradition thus far. " Magog," says the Jewish historian, " led out 

 a colony, which, from him, were named Magoges, but by the Greeks 

 called Scythians."* The Scythians, however, being too generic a. 

 name, too much an " officina gentium," the annalists defined the stock 

 of their pedigree, as a precise tribe of Scythians, who, as they ex- 

 pressly allege, had established themselves in the remotest ages on the 

 borders of the Red Sea, and retained their possessions until expelled 

 from Capa-Chiroth,"!- (i. e. the town of Chiroth,) which, in the 

 sacred writings is called Piha-Chiroth,:|: (i, e. the port of Chiroth,) 

 by the grandson of that Pharaoh who had been drowned in the Red 

 Sea, and whose animosity was excited by the circumstance of this 

 people having supplied the Israelites with provisions. Minute as this 

 incident is, it is singularly confirmed, both as to the cause and fact of 

 the expulsion, by Rabbi Simon, who lived two hundred years before 

 the birth of Christ ; for he says that certain Canaanites near the Red 

 Sea gave provisions to the Israelites, " and because these Canaan ships 

 gave Israel of their provisions, God would not destroy their ships, but 

 with an east wind carried them down the Red Sea."§ 



It would seem, though there is some difference in the accounts, 

 that upon this eviction, the exiles settled in that particular coun- 

 try, which was subsequently called Phoenicia; and here again the 

 narrative is borne out by one of those few Phoenician traditions, 



* " Jiluyuyrif di T0V5 cnr'tiuTiu "Muyuycc; my.xrinrcii ukiti, IkuIxi; Ss vv xvrm 3-j67«yejjt)«^Jv«t<?." 

 Antiq. Jud. lib. 1. c. 6. 



f Vide Keating's Ireland, B. I. p. 2. c. 3. 

 , i This peculiarity of variance siij)ports the antiquity of the Irish annals. 

 § Lib. Zoar. p. 87, as cited by Yallancey, and Parsons's Defence, &c. p. 205. 



