312 On Scriptural and profane Accounts | 
tails of their conquests are only the natural 
developement of it, in which it would be in 
vain to seek for any peculiar reference to my- 
thology. On the other hand, there are many 
circumstances in the narrative which, in an 
historical view, are improbable, or at least 
so peculiar, that the mind would not be na- 
turally led to them, in expanding the gene- 
ral idea of conquering sovereigns into all its — 
details ; for these we must seek some specific 
cause; and this again is supplied by. mytho- 
logy. Our further progress in this inquiry, 
will be greatly facilitated, by our casting a 
glance upon the peculiar system of mytho- 
logy which appears to have prevailed in this 
part of Asia, and which indeed is very closely 
connected in its principles with the Grecian, 
the Egyptian and the Hinda religions. 
When man first began to reflect on the 
causes of the changes which he beheld in 
nature, as we can only reason to what we 
know not, from what we know, nothing was 
more natural, than that he should assimilate 
the operations by which all the productions of 
nature are brought into being, to those by 
which the species of animals are continued ; 
that he should personify the energies of na- 
ture, under the image of male and female, 
a great father and great mother, to whose 
mysterious union the fertility of all things 
