9'2 INTRODUCTION^ 



indicated ; because it may be that animal was then 

 already regarded as the moving emblem of the 

 planet of day, and had become one of its personifi- 

 cations. We find evidence to this effect among 

 those nations, neighbours of the Hebrews, who, as 

 before remarked,' appear to have descended from 

 north-eastern Scythae or giant tribes ; one of which 

 worshipped Ana-Melek, according to commentators, 

 in the form of a horse, probably the same idolatrous 

 divinity known to subsequent Arabs by the name of 

 Yauk. Other tribes, of more indigenous origin, had 

 similar idols under the form of their own native Equi- 

 dse ; such was Tarhak or Tartak of the Avim, who 

 typified their national god by the figure of an ass, and 

 Adra-melek is mentioned to have been formed in the 

 likeness of a mule ; which, if the assertion were cor- 

 rect, would establish the antiquity of that hybrid 

 produce at an early period indeed ; but most likely 

 we should understand by the name the hemionus 

 of naturalists, which once existed as far to the south 

 at least as Great Armenia and Asia Minor. 



In Europe, the black horse was long considered 

 as a form of an evil demon; among the modern 

 Pagan Asiatics, Schaman sorcery is usually per- 

 formed w^ith images of small horses suspended from 

 a rope ; and a sort of idolatrous worship is admitted 

 even by Mohammedans, when effigies of the horse of 



constellations named, in a region more northerly than either 

 Egypt or the plains of India ; therefore, anteriorly to the civi- 

 lization of either, prior to the arrival of the horse ; and conse- 

 quently we are carried back to an unknowTi social state in 

 Bactria or Cachcmire, 



