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According to the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, 

 xiii. 2, idolatry began by the worship of the sun, moon, 

 stars, and fire. Afterwards, a father, grieving for the untimely 

 death of his son, made an image of him, honoured him as 

 a God, and delivered to his subjects ceremonies and 

 sacrifices. Wisdom, xiv. 15. 



In the nations most anciently civilized, as the East Indies, 

 Persia, Chaldea, Egypt, and Phenicia, some system of 

 cosmogony and theogony formed the basis on which their 

 religious worship, and its distinct objects were founded. 

 Most of these systems I shall, however, at present, overlook, 

 and confine myself to that of the Phenicians alone, they 

 being the only people with whom, in the earliest times, the 

 Greeks, the origin of whose mythology I now mean to 

 investigate, had any connexion. 



But before I proceed, I must remark, that I consider the 

 Phenicians and Canaanites as one and the same people, both 

 as to descent, language, and worship : the inhabitants of the 

 interior country of Palestine being called Canaanites, of 

 whom there were several tribes ; and those of the sea coast 

 being called Phenicians. Their identity has been abundantly 

 proved, first by Bocharf, and lately by AhbS Mignot, in the 

 34th volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, p. 193, and is 

 now, I believe, generally admitted : what is said of the 

 worship of the one, is therefore applicable to that of the 

 iJther, D 2 



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