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THEORY OP THE EARTH. 119 



Moses. They had even theoretically devised a 

 series of alternate revolutions ; one set occasion- 

 ed by means of water, and the other by means of 

 fire ; which notion had also prevailed among the 

 Assyrians, and even in Etruria. 



The Greeks, who derived their civilization at 

 a late period from Phoenicia and Egypt, mixed 

 the confused ideas which they had received of the 

 mythologies of these nations with the equally con- 

 fused vestiges of their own earliest history. The 

 sun, personified under the name of Ammon, or the 

 Egyptian Jupiter, was converted into a prince of 

 Crete. Phta, the grand artisan or creator of all 

 things, was converted into Hephestes, or Vulcan, 

 a smith of Lemnos. CAom, another symbol of the 

 sun, or of the divine power, was transformed into 

 Heracles, or Hercules, a prodigiously strong hero 

 of Thebes. The cruel Moloch of the Phoenicians, 

 the same with the Remphah of the Egyptians, be- 

 came with them Cronos, or Time, who devour- 

 ed his own children, and was afterwards meta- 

 morphosed into Saturn, King of Italy.* When 

 any violent inundation took place during the reign 

 of any of their princes, the Greeks afterwards de- 



* See Jablonsky, Pantheon .^Egyptiacum, and Gatterer, de Theo- 

 gonia Egyptiorum, in the seventh volume of the Gottingen Memoirs. 



These two authors do not agree any more than the ancients, as to 

 the significations of the Egyptian divinities ; but they perfectly agree 

 with each other, and with the ancient writers, as to the gross altera- 

 tions made respecting them by the Greeks. 



