1 06 Gleanings from the 



eighteenth dynafty, and the agreement between its 

 name in Egyptian and in Hebrew points to a 

 Semitic origin. 1 With the Greeks it was facred 

 to Pofeidon, and the well-known legend of his 

 creation of the animal may either point to its in- 

 troduction into Hellas by fea, or be an inftance 

 of Greek poetic fancy (juft as we talk of "white 

 horfes " when the waves ruffle the fea in fummer), 

 and be connected with the horfes of the fun, fo 

 frequent a myth in Oriental mythologies, which 

 feem every morning to rife from the fea. 2 So the 

 Rhodians ufed yearly to caft into the fea a four- 

 horfe chariot which had been dedicated to the fun, 

 and every ninth year in Illyricum four chariot 

 horfes were fimilarly caft into the fea. Sophocles 

 fpeaks of day dawning with its white horfes 

 ("Ajax," 672). 



Among the Perfians Mithra was the fun-god, 

 and was perfonified, as alfo among the Greeks 

 and Romans, as driving a team of horfes in his 

 chariot. There are numberlefs allufions in ancient 

 literature to the horfe as being an animal facred 

 to the fun. "Periia," fays Ovid, "appeafes the 

 fun with a horfe that a flow victim may not be 

 given to a fwift god." 3 Xenophon fpeaks of the 

 fame facrifice. The Scythian MafTagetae followed 

 the fame cuftom, " facrificing the fwifteft of all 

 mortal creatures to the fwifteft of the gods." 4 In 



1 Wilkinfon, "Ancient Egyptians" (Abridgment, vol. i., 

 p. 386). 



2 To Neptune was attributed the invention of reins. Soph. 

 (Ed. Col.," 713-15, Dind. 



s Faft.,"i. 385. * Lib. i. 216. 



