124 The Arabian Horse. 



A stray horse of the Sabaeans may have been the cause 

 of the phenomenon, which was evidently accidental, and 

 not, as now, by a perversion of man's ; or the accident 

 may have happened as horses were being sent from 

 Arabia into Egypt. 



Besides, Scripture clearly indicates that the horse was 

 in Arabia at a very early period by the description of 

 him in the Book of Job, allowed by most to be a work 

 of the highest antiquity, considered by many the oldest 

 extant, believed to have been originally in Arabic, and 

 afterwards translated into Hebrew. When did Job live, 

 where, and of what race was he } One thing is certain : he 

 was a worshipper of the true God, and his acts of wor- 

 ship were according to those of the days of Noah. Job 

 is described as living in the land of Uz. Uz was the 

 name of one of the grandsons of Seir the Horite, who in- 

 habited the land before Esau's days, and probably 

 given to that part of the country to which Uz de- 

 parted, and not the district known as Mount Seir, some- 

 where in Arabia, and in the northern part, and was 

 equally accessible to the Chaldeans as to the Sabseans, 

 the southern Arabs ; which would indicate that portion 

 of Arabia occupied by Ishmael's children, ' from Havilah 

 unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest towards 

 Assyria,' reaching from just nortli of Mount Sinai to 

 the south of Babylonia, and just north of the Persian 

 Gulf May not Job have been a descendant of Ishmael, 

 and living even in the days of Abraham } The names 

 of Ishmael's sons are given, but not of his grandsons. 

 One of those sons was Tema ; one of Job's friends was a 



